Motion E02

I was at the Green Party Conference this weekend, and in the room for the vote on Motion E02: Zionism is Racism. The debate was surprisingly calm and good-natured for such a contentious topic. A member who had survived the Holocaust as a child spoke passionately in favour of the motion. I voted against it, and I wish it hadn’t passed. The motion passed on a margin of only 209 votes (1,022 for, 813 against) out of a membership of over 200,000. A member-led democracy isn’t all it should be if under 1% of the membership take part in votes. The preamble states that Zionism is a political ideology which called for the creation – and, now it exists, the continuity – of an ethnonationalist Jewish State in historic Palestine to the exclusion and/or domination of the non-Jewish population. The real, material manifestation of Zionism has been the historic and ongoing dehumanisation, displacement, dispossession, disenfranchisement and destruction of Palestinians. This is based upon European…