“Support us to stop the far Right,” say the Greens. But what if parts of the Greens themselves belong to the far Right?
Saiqa Ali, a Green candidate in next week’s election in Streatham St Leonard’s, Lambeth, posts an image on her Instagram account of the earth being strangled by a giant snake bearing the Star of David on its skin. She believes that the British government contains too many “Zionist Jews”, and that Donald Trump is “owned by Jews”.
Not even the Z-word, the latter. Not even Israel. Just… Jews, writes Laurie Wastell in The Spectator.
Ali also posts an image of an armed man wearing what appears to be a Hamas headband, with the caption: “Long live the resistance movement.” Praising terrorists in that manner may in fact constitute a criminal offence.
Ali has, moreover, now been arrested by the police for antisemitism. So too has her party colleague from the same district, Sabine Mairey. Mairey posted a video in which she claims that a terror attack on a synagogue “was not antisemitism”, but “revenge” against Israel.
In addition, the co-leader of the Greens, Zack Polanski, is accused by Sir Mark Rowley, head of the Metropolitan Police, of having exacerbated tensions by criticising the police for their handling of the terror attacks in Golders Green.
Britain’s most senior police officer accused the leader of the Greens of sharing an “inaccurate and misinformed” post on social media about how police arrested the suspected knife attacker who had just stabbed two Jewish men.
Polanski shared a post on X in which the police were criticised for having “repeatedly and violently kicked a mentally ill man in the head while he had already been incapacitated by a taser”.
A poor perpetrator, in other words.
Other Green candidates give the concept of “environmentalist” an entirely new meaning. Rebecca Jones, who stands for the party in Blackheath, Lewisham, states that we must “burn Zionism to the ground”. Jones is a practising general practitioner in the British National Health Service (NHS).
Ifhat Shaheen, a Green candidate in Hackney, says that the mass murder, rapes and abductions of civilians on 7 October were merely Palestinians “inevitably trying to defend themselves”. Feda Shahin, a candidate in Bournemouth, claims that “the Zionists killed 20 million Christians”.
Over the past weeks, at least 17 Green candidates have been exposed by The Spectator and others as holding or sharing abhorrent views. Many of them will soon also hold public office, with considerable power over their local communities, including Jews.
This marks a difference from Labour under the Jeremy Corbyn era, for under Corbyn most of the haters were merely activists, not official representatives in positions.
In addition, we have Kate Nevens of The Scottish Greens, who is a walking catastrophe. Nevens wishes to abolish prisons, since they do not work. For whom do prisons not work?
It appears that she believes they do not work very well for the poor convicted offenders. But if a violent person is behind bars, that person can at least not create further violence on the streets.
The Greens at central level nevertheless continue to support these radical candidates, and 15 of the 17 accused and/or suspected remain fully approved candidates, even though many of the stories were widely known already before the nomination deadline expired.
Indeed, figures from the party leadership expressed a certain admiration. As the Greens’ deputy leader Mothin Ali stated:
“Everyone currently being attacked in the media should know that the only reason for the smears is [sic] that you are making the right kind of noise… Know that you are not alone.”
According to opinion polls, this party enjoys support from between 10 and 17 per cent of British voters. It receives particularly strong support among young Britons. The future of the United Kingdom thus does not appear particularly bright.
An explicit statement from the Greens’ number two which appears to suggest that candidates who have made racist and extremist statements are “making the right kind of noise”.
Could it therefore be that the Greens under Mothin Ali and Zack Polanski have adopted a deliberate strategy of appealing to racists and extremists? At least some of them.
If so, this is literally without precedent outside the extreme far Right. The conclusion is then tempting: the Greens are a racist party that has specialised in hatred of Jews.
The Greens’ co-leader Zack Polanski appears to have chosen a strategy with a clear aim of intimidating Jews. Among other things, he has questioned whether British Jews suffer from a “perception of insecurity”, rather than “actual insecurity”. Polanski refuses to apologise for the antisemitic statements.
But being attacked with actual weapons, experiencing attacks on synagogues and Jewish ambulances, and reading about Green candidates claiming that Jews own Donald Trump, sounds rather “insecure” to many outside the party.
The former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was brought down by similar matters. Now hatred of Jews has gained new life as a result of the Gaza war; even the mullahs in Tehran are portrayed as victims. Polanski follows suit. Perhaps he believes that his own Jewish background functions as a shield?
NTB described Polanski on 30 November as “a charismatic leader” in a report on Corbyn’s new party Your Party.
Opinion polls suggest that the Greens, with their charismatic leader Zack Polanski, have captured the majority of the dissatisfied voters on the Left in the United Kingdom.
Internal opposition within the party has weakened. Some “old Greens”, those who were in the party before Polanski, Ali and the Corbyn supporters entered, are clearly appalled. But others enjoy the relative success from a very low starting point. And moderate Greens, unlike those in Labour, have no appetite for factional struggles.
Why is Gaza the Greens’ answer to so many questions? When Polanski was told that his plans to confiscate Trump’s golf courses might be legally problematic, he replied: “I think what is more problematic is the genocide in Gaza.”
Some claim it is merely an attempt to capture Muslim votes. But do British Muslims really care that much about Gaza?
In a poll during the parliamentary election, only 21 per cent of British Muslims cited Gaza as their most important issue. Only 44 per cent of British Muslims placed Gaza among their five most important issues. The figures for non-Muslims were far lower.
The streets are filled with demonstrators consisting of newly arrived radical Muslims who hate Jews and Israel, supported by left-radical Britons with exactly the same attitudes.
Wastell believes that the most important reason for the Greens’ obsession is that Israel and Gaza increasingly serve the same function for left-wing populists as the EU did for right-wing populists.
It is an issue that functions as an “organising idea” to mobilise activists and construct a broader argument for how the United Kingdom and the world have gone wrong.
Gaza is used to argue for the West’s moral bankruptcy, its colonisation of subjugated peoples, the hypocrisy of the Western liberal order and the greed of capitalism – all of this must be overthrown. Israel and/or Zionism and/or the Jews are attacked as the supreme embodiments of these dark forces.
It is like a new blood libel against the Jews, but this time it is not Christian but Muslim children they are accused of killing. Even when the “children” are 17-year-old terrorists with hand grenades and machine guns, the Jews remain the ultimate scapegoats, as they have been for centuries. The solution remains the extermination of Jews.
Such aims are, of course, far more radical than a healthy scepticism towards a corrupt union governed by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, and the haters of Jews are undoubtedly far more extreme than Eurosceptics. This may be part of the reason why the Greens are unlikely to expel Saiqa Ali, Sabine Mairey or Rebecca Jones.
Saiqa Ali from The Green Party appears more concerned with Jews than with the climate. Photo: The Green Party/ Streatham
But most voters, with the exception of the extreme Left, know that one can support the rights of Palestinians without resorting to conspiracy theories, violence, racism or fanaticism. One can support the rights of Palestinians while recognising that Jews – even Israelis – also have rights.
Or one may realise that Palestinians are merely another name for Arabs, and that there has never existed a country by the name of Palestine. One may also realise that the perpetual insistence on a two-state solution makes no sense.
Israel has abandoned the idea after failed attempts, including in Gaza, culminating on 7 October. Not even the Palestinian Arabs are satisfied with a two-state solution. They are not satisfied until Israel is erased, From the River to the Sea.
Polanski stands on the wrong side of the historical line, and is likely the most extreme party leader in the post-war history of British politics. It is simply a matter of making the extremism visible; that will hopefully limit his support and ultimately lead to his downfall.
One can only hope that The Green Party will also eventually fall. But with such a hope, one will probably need to exercise patience.