Palestinian academic Ghada Karmi has called the Green Party’s Zionism is Racism motion "a beacon of light" in a press conference hosted by Greens for Palestine on Friday.
The motion was passed on 4 October with 1,022 votes in favour and 813 against.
Born in 1939, Karmi, who came to London in 1949 after her family was forcibly expelled from Palestine in the Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe), said the motion is “the best thing that’s happened to me, personally, since 1948.”
The motion has been met with backlash both from political opponents and from within the party.
Green MP Adrian Ramsay said he was "deeply upset" after the motion passed.
Lawyer Adam Wagner, who has previously represented the Campaign Against Antisemitism, said the motion may violate the Equality Act of 2010 because it "will discriminate against and harass people who hold Zionist beliefs and Jewish people more generally."
Green Party leader Zack Polanski, who is Jewish, said in a statement, “antisemitism and criticism of the Israeli state are, and must always be, completely distinct.”
"No-one will be made unwelcome because of their background, their faith, or where they worship."
Karmi, who thanked both Polanski and Lubna Speitan, who proposed the motion, responded to the criticism, saying, “I don’t know what the fuss is about; of course it’s racist.”
"The essence of this is really nothing to do with being Palestinian. It's to do with being non-Jewish," she said.
"We're the wrong ethnicity, and that's why we're being prosecuted. If that's not racist, I don't know what is," she continued.
The motion states that Israel is an "apartheid," "ethnonationalist" state, and calls for the establishment of a single Palestinian state "with equal rights for all."
An amendment which would have removed the call for a single Palestinian state was voted down, as was one which would have prevented people from being disciplined by the party for membership of Jewish institutions with a Zionist stance, including synagogues.
Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham responded by ruling out a future coalition with the Green Party as long as the motion stands.
In September, Labour’s Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced limited sanctions against Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but the Labour government has continued to arrest protesters supporting the proscribed group Palestine Action.
Speitan, who proposed the motion, said at the press conference that she hopes other organisations, including trade unions and political parties, will adopt the stance that Zionism is racism.
