Zionist regime bars UK Green Party leader over historic ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution

The punitive ban underscores the growing isolation of the Zionist regime on the international stage and its increasing reliance on retaliation to silence valid criticism of its apartheid policies and ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

The controversy erupted on Sunday during the Green Party’s annual conference, where members voted 1,022 to 813 to pass the motion defining Zionism as racism. While Polanski abstained from the vote, the Zionist regime swiftly targeted him personally.

In a post on X, the Zionist regime’s Foreign Ministry announced that Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar had barred Polanski from entering the country. The ministry justified the ban by claiming the Greens had adopted "a resolution equating Zionism with racism, legitimising armed struggle against Israel, and calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state … meaning the destruction of the State of Israel."

In a predictable reflex, the Israeli Foreign Ministry declared the resolution "a clear antisemitic text," continuing its long-standing strategy of weaponizing the accusation of antisemitism to conflate legitimate political opposition to Zionism with hatred against Jewish people.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog echoed this outrage, taking to social media to call the Green Party's decision "a disgrace."

"Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, and it forms the basis for the Jewish people's right to a state and a national home in the Land of Israel," Herzog claimed, entirely ignoring the decades of dispossession, ethnic cleansing, and systemic racism inflicted upon the indigenous Palestinian population.

The motion passed by the Green Party membership represents a significant ideological shift in UK politics.

It mandates that Zionism be "treated as any other form of racism" and explicitly endorses the establishment of a "single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine."

"This has been a serious and deeply felt debate within our membership," a Green Party spokesperson acknowledged following the vote.

Although Polanski skipped the actual vote, a move that laid bare internal divisions within the party leadership, he has publicly aligned himself with the core grievances driving the resolution.

Earlier this week, the Green Party leader stated that the "displacement and genocide of the Palestinian people" was "clearly racism."

The Green Party, which currently holds five seats in the UK’s 650-seat parliament, has seen a surge in popularity under Polanski’s leadership.

This momentum is largely driven by voters who are deeply dissatisfied with the ruling Labour Party’s complicit stance on the Israeli regime's war of extermination in Gaza.

However, the establishment backlash against the Green Party’s resolution was swift and severe, highlighting the entrenched defense of the Israeli regime across mainstream UK politics.

Bridget Phillipson, chair of the ruling Labour Party and Minister for Women and Equalities, condemned the Green Party's decision, revealing the establishment's commitment to maintaining the status quo of Israeli occupation.

"It is shameful to vote against a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine and to condemn the vast majority of British Jews and Jews around the world as racist for supporting Israel's right to exist," Phillipson stated in a party release.

Additionally, three prominent Jewish community groups, the Board of Deputies, the Community Security Trust, and the Jewish Leadership Council, wrote a letter to the party ahead of the vote, warning that the motion would make the Greens the "first electorally significant UK political party in living memory to adopt what appears to be an overtly antisemitic political platform," and expressing concerns for the safety of British Jews.

Despite the establishment pressure, the vote proceeded, though it exposed fractures within the party's parliamentary caucus, with at least three of the five Green MPs opposing the measure.