Members of the Green Party of England and Wales approved an outrageous motion on Sunday during their party conference in Brighton, declaring that “Zionism is racism.” The move has ignited bitter controversy across the United Kingdom and intensified criticism over the party’s increasingly extreme posture toward Israel.
The resolution passed by a majority of 1,022 to 813, formally establishing an explicitly anti-Zionist line. According to the text of the decision, Zionism is defined as an “ethno-nationalist political project,” alongside a clause asserting that opposition to Zionism should not be conflated with antisemitism.
The approved text also incorporates calls to bolster the “‘Palestinian’ struggle,” endorses the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, demands an immediate comprehensive arms embargo against Israel, and calls for the establishment of a single “democratic” state across all of “historic ‘Palestine'”—amounting in practice to the dissolution of the Jewish state.
The resolution sparked internal friction within the party before the vote, with several senior figures voicing deep reservations about its inflammatory phrasing and diplomatic repercussions. Party Chairman Zack Polanski chose not to vote. At the same time, Green Member of Parliament Carla Denyer warned that the resolution threatened to undermine the party’s long-standing support for the mutual right to self-determination for both peoples.
Following the decision, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar issued a blistering condemnation, denouncing the vote as an extremist provocation that crosses the boundaries of legitimate democratic discourse and demonstrates overt hostility toward the Jewish state. In a public statement, Sa’ar declared that the UK Green Party “has ceased functioning as a legitimate political party and has transformed into a terror-supporting organization” that has embraced an “ideological doctrine advocating the elimination of the State of Israel through armed struggle.”
Sa’ar further noted that the resolution legitimizes armed warfare and effectively calls for Israel’s destruction via the creation of a ‘Palestinian’ state “from the river to the sea.” He characterized the resolution as a “text that crosses all acceptable lines of political debate” and constitutes “a dark stain on the history of the United Kingdom.”
The Israeli foreign minister called on mainstream British political parties—foremost among them the governing Labor Party—to issue an immediate and unequivocal repudiation of the Greens’ vote, warning that silence would be seen as granting legitimacy to the extremist platform endorsed at the Brighton conference.