The Green Party has crossed a dangerous line. It has adopted a policy under which Jewish national self-determination is classified as racism, while rejecting a safeguard intended to protect members affiliated with Zionist synagogues and Jewish organisations.
On 4 October 2026, members at the party’s Brighton conference approved the resolution by 1,022 votes to 813. The warning in my previous article is therefore no longer about something that might become policy. It concerns a decision that has been made.
The most disturbing question now is how far that decision will reach into Jewish communal life.
The party says the motion does not alter its disciplinary procedures. Supporters have also denied that members will be expelled simply for expressing Zionist beliefs. Yet conference rejected an amendment intended to protect members against pressure or disciplinary action because of their affiliation with synagogues and other Jewish organisations describing themselves as Zionist.
That contradiction deserves scrutiny.
The Magen David was adopted as a symbol of the Zionist movement on August 29, 1897 at the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, and later as the flag of Israel by the Provisional Council of State on October 28, 1948.
And if communal affiliation is not to be used against members, why reject an explicit safeguard saying so? A general assurance against discrimination offers little comfort when the disputed policy brands a conviction held by many Jews as inherently racist.
A person should not have to choose between belonging to a synagogue and being accepted by a political party. Nor should a Jewish organisation have to submit its connection with Israel for ideological inspection before its members are considered fit for public life.
This is where the resolution’s danger becomes concrete.
A synagogue is a place of prayer, learning, obligation and community. Its relationship with Zion may be expressed through its liturgy, its teaching, its support for Israel or the experiences of its members. That relationship cannot honestly be reduced to endorsement of every decision taken by an Israeli government.
Torah-observant congregations repeatedly pray for Jerusalem, the ingathering of our people and restoration in our land. Some identify openly with political Zionism (whatever that means); others reject that label or particular understandings of it. We should not pretend those differences do not exist.
But neither should anyone exploit those differences to make attachment to Zion suspect.
The central question is not what percentage of synagogue websites contain the word “Zionist” or a synagogues' use of the Magen David. It is whether a political party intends to treat ordinary expressions of Jewish national belonging as evidence of racism.
Our connection with Zion does not begin on a website. It does not depend upon a modern political declaration. It is present in the Tanakh, in Jewish prayer and in the continuity of our people.
The Jewish Nation did not cease to exist because we were driven from our homeland. Exile did not dissolve Israel. Our continuity does not depend upon uninterrupted sovereignty or recognition by foreign governments.
The extension of suspicion from a belief to an organisation is especially troubling. Once an institution is labelled unacceptable, those associated with it can be pressed to explain themselves: why do you attend that synagogue, support that charity or belong to that communal organisation?
The accusation then travels through association.
A member need not have defended any purported discriminatory act. It may become sufficient that an organisation with which he is connected supports Israel’s continued existence as a Jewish state.
That is an intolerable standard.
The same danger applies to the Magen David. It is an established emblem of Zionism and occupies the centre of the modern State of Israel’s flag. That association cannot be dismissed when examining the consequences of a political party declaring Zionism racist.
My point concerns its national and political significance. The Magen David is not a Torah-appointed emblem of Judaism. Our covenant with G‑D is not represented or fulfilled by wearing a design. Our faith and trust belong in Him, and no physical emblem represents Him or substitutes for obedience to His word.
The question is therefore direct: will the Green Party’s resolution pressure Jews and non-Jews to stop displaying the Magen David, an emblem of the Zionist movement since 1897 and of the modern State of Israel since 1948? My position is clear: it represents national belonging, not Judaism itself, which has no divinely appointed emblem.
Will people face pressure to remove it from their jewellery, profiles, websites and organisational materials? Will charities, businesses and community organisations displaying it be accused of promoting an ideology that the party has now classified as racist?
The resolution does not expressly prohibit the Magen David, but it classifies Zionism as racism, raising concerns about how its condemnation might extend to an internationally recognised emblem of the Zionist movement. Formal prohibition is not the only means of suppressing expression. Accusations, exclusion and fear of consequences can pressure people to conceal what they previously displayed openly.
An organisation’s use of the emblem could become a starting point for suspicion. Its members could then be asked to distance themselves from that organisation, explain their affiliation or demonstrate that their attachment to Israel falls within boundaries set by others.
That is the danger I am identifying.
Having branded Zionism racist, the Green Party must explain whether the emblems associated with Zionism—and the people and organisations displaying them—will become targets of that condemnation.
It cannot dismiss this question while refusing an explicit safeguard for affiliation with Zionist Jewish institutions.
Israel has responded by announcing that Green Party leader Zack Polanski is barred from entering the country. Polanski did not participate in the conference vote, having left to campaign elsewhere. The announcement nevertheless places responsibility upon him as the party’s leader.
The ban raises a separate question: can Israel prevent a Jew from exercising the Right of Return?
The statutory right is powerful but not unconditional. Section 2(b) of the Law of Return permits refusal where the Interior Minister is satisfied that an applicant engages in activity directed against the Jewish people, threatens public health or state security, or has a criminal past likely to endanger public welfare.
The exceptions therefore extend beyond terrorism.
However, an announced entry ban and a decision on an application to settle in Israel under the Law of Return are different matters. Without the relevant legal decision, we should not describe the announcement as a permanent extinguishment of Polanski’s eligibility for Aliyah.
Nor should disagreement with him lead us to treat exclusion from Israel as a trivial matter. Jewish national belonging is too serious to become a weapon used casually against an opponent.
Whether Polanski intends to make Aliyah or visit Jerusalem for Hanukkah is beside the point. The legal principles should be examined accurately. His travel arrangements should not distract us from the implications of his party’s policy for Jews living in Britain.
Those implications are serious enough without exaggeration.
History gives us reason to recognise the danger of conditional acceptance: the Jew may participate, provided he abandons an attachment, disowns an institution or conceals a visible expression of belonging.
Such demands have taken different forms in different periods. Their consequences have varied. A party resolution today is not equivalent to every historical persecution of Jews, and future atrocities should not be presented as inevitable.
But history does not become irrelevant merely because the language of exclusion has changed.
When a Jewish conviction is renamed a moral contamination, and communal affiliation becomes grounds for suspicion, we should recognise the mechanism and challenge it.
The Green Party’s leadership cannot settle this by repeating that it opposes discrimination. It must explain how its adopted policy will avoid stigmatising Jews and Jewish institutions whose attachment to Israel it has classified as racism.
It must also confront the difference between defending Arab rights and denying Jewish national rights. Justice for one people does not require the dissolution of another people’s homeland.
Verbal criticism of Israel, where appropriate, remains legitimate. Jewish politicians remain open to criticism. Jewish organisations remain accountable for their conduct. None of that requires a blanket accusation against Jewish self-determination, also known as Zionism.
Our obligation to treat other people with consideration does not require us to surrender our identity. Our opposition to cruelty does not require us to abandon Zion. Our participation in British society must not depend upon concealing who we are.
The Green Party has passed its resolution.
It has not gained the authority to decide which Jewish attachments we may keep.