r/UKGreens

Seems to be trouble, I read about it at the mill.

https://manchestermill.co.uk/green-party-councillors-bolton-spencer-alli-khan

TL;DR - This motion is poorly worded, failing to define terms and fails at working as a series of politically actionable policies. It risks galvanising the party and could be seen as legitimately antisemitic.

I am making this to say that I think this motion should be opposed when discussed in the upcoming Conference. This is a hot topic of course and I wan't to prefix that me saying this in no way shows support for the ongoing genocide in Gaza or the state of Israel, however this motion as it stands is likely to do more harm than good for the parties standing and is generally poorly worded. Lets break down the reasons to vote against the motion:

It poorly defines its terms

The main one in this is how the paper choses to categories Zionism, an ideological position that can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. The motion includes:

>"Zionism is a racist settler - colonial ideology"

and this and is not true. Zionism can mean anything from a belief in the existence of a jewish state overall but opposition all the way up to its most radical incarnation sometimes called Kahanism**.** This conflation makes this motion rather useless as it ignores all other uses of a very diverse ideology.

It could hurt Jewish Greens

The motion is defining in such strong language opposition to Israel, Zionism and the IDF could harm Jewish party members. Many jewish people have a connection to Israel and Zionism. As Jewish greens put it:

>This gives the party the option to expel almost any Jew involved in organised communal life or who has ever been, including our party leader. Meaning that most Jews in the party – whether they define themselves as Zionists or not – are one grudge away from being dragged through the disciplinary process on spurious charges of ‘Zionism’.

I think I don't need to explain now this can be seen as antisemitic, it risks hurting are jewish comrades and will very likely be pushed this way in the news as a way to paint the party as overrun by jew-haters, as we have seen already. And as we have seen are currant party leader is opposed to discussing the motion.

It is not political action

The motion is full of ideological Rhetoric that is, simply put, not what a political party should be doing. Ideology is important yes, however we can recognise and have stances all day and it does no good to the people of Gaza and the West bank. For exaple:

>The motion seeks to recognise the significance of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement to the struggle.

Ok? So we say that this is a bad thing, will this help end the suffering? No. This sort of thing is fine for a protest movement, or charity organisation but not a political party. We need to focus on policy that takes action, sanctions, cutting trade deals, a repeal for PAs branding as a terrorist organisation, a pledge to stand by the ICC's arrest warrant of Benjamin Netanyahu are all actions with a greater impact.

This sort of action is important but better done outside of party action by supporting pro-Palestine liberation movements, attending protests and such

Source: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/wrongful-convictions-misperceptions-of-crime.pdf page 21

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