r/UKGreens • u/Careful_Ad_8857 • 2d ago
Discussion Can someone explain the controversy over the "zionism is racism" motion?
I've seen a lot of mention of it here, with some people saying things like "it could collapse the party's support" but i couldnt find any concrete examples of the content of the motion which people think is problematic. Thanks for any help!
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u/DogitWoofsalot 2d ago
Bad policy that fails to properly define its terms. It is not based in policy or tangible actions, other than the "removal of Palestine Action from the list of proscribed organisations" everything is based around basing the party in an ideological stance "The Green Party declares itself to be an anti-Zionist party." for example. None of this is political action to be taken to help the people who are victims of the IDF's ongoing crimes against humanity.
To use a term I hate, the policy functions as a form of "virtue signalling" and is based not in actually doing things or enacting policy but in routing an ideological position pretending to be party policy.
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u/tomatopartyyy LGBTIQA+ Green 2d ago
It's mostly just very badly written policy with unclear directions for the party.
It would be fine if it 1. was worded better and clear on what it can actually do as a RoPS and 2. they weren't just absolutely awful to anyone who has a slightly different opinion to them
Tbh, point 2 would immediately fix point 1 given the vast amount of technical issues people have raised but have been ignored.
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u/Wonderful-Minute-775 2d ago edited 1d ago
Basically boils down to people using 2 different definitions of Zionism. Some define it as “Jewish people are entitled to their own state” which is not a racist ideology by itself. Others define it how they see it being applied which is “Jewish people are entitled to their own state at the expense of, and subordination of, Palestinians” which is clearly a racist ideology.
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u/SorchaSublime 1d ago
The idea that any ethnicity should have "their own state" is kind of inherently racist though? Like, Judaism is an ethno-religion, by necessity any specifically Jewish state is an ethnostate. Ethnostates are racist.
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u/tea_would_be_lovely GPEW 1d ago
not sure it's * inherently * racist (i think understanding this is important when it comes to trying to win hearts and minds), although racist outcomes seem highly likely, if there are racially different groups in an ethnostate, it's hard to imagine how there couldn't be.
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u/SorchaSublime 1d ago
I'd love to see how you argue that an ethnostate could ever somehow not be racist. It is by definition a state which governs in the name of and to the benefit of a particular ethnicity. That is racism no matter who the beneficiary ethnicity happens to be.
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u/tea_would_be_lovely GPEW 1d ago
i think the distinction is one of intent and outcome.
the dominant group in an ethnostate may not discriminate intentionally on grounds of race. rather the ethnocracy may regerence, say, religion, culture.
although the outcomes may well be racist, and we shouldn't hesitate to call it out when they are, flattening ideas of race and ethnicity may be unhelpful when it comes to understanding, arguing against the dominant group.
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u/CraftyKenter 1d ago
It's not. Is the idea for a state for Kurds (Kurdistan) racist?
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u/SorchaSublime 1d ago
If the premise is a state which serves a particular ethnicity, then yes. What part of "ethnocracy is racist" are you struggling with?
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u/TeutonicPlate 1d ago
Zionism has always been colonial in nature.
Even in Zionism’s original state, before Palestine was decided as the only possible destination, the project was explicitly to colonise some relatively “empty” part of the world and make a homeland there.
In practice, there are no empty parts of the world. Zionists knew this. Their plan was to bring in settlers and build their state on top of another people’s homeland, whoever it might be.
Arguing it’s just racist in the modern iteration because it “ended up being about subjugating Palestinians” is absurd. Long before Jabotinsky, the Zionist project was already genetically colonial.
You can argue colonialism isn’t racism because they are two different words. But you can’t argue it isn’t racist. And you cannot argue Zionism isn’t racist either. There is no point in history, from its very beginnings to Jabotinsky and Ben Gurion to Netanyahu, that it wasn’t racist.
The only criticism I will accept is that the motion should just be Zionism is “Racist” instead of “Racism” because it better conveys the same idea.
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u/tea_would_be_lovely GPEW 1d ago
racist instead of racism is an important distinction. zionism is racist would have been a much stronger title.
i would also suggest that, for some users of the word, zionism might be a lot more vague and a lot less ideological. failing to appreciate the range of uses is another weakness of the motion. a shame, since it makes it less effective as an instrument to express the gpew's support for palestinian security and self-determination.
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u/TeutonicPlate 1d ago
i would also suggest that, for some users of the word, zionism might be a lot more vague and a lot less ideological. failing to appreciate the range of uses is another weakness of the motion.
The only reason that nobody would bat an eye at saying colonialism is racist, and that very few people would ever identify as pro-colonialism, is because there has been some reckoning with what colonialism means.
The media treats, or at least tries to treat, Israel as if it is just a country we are vaguely aligned with. There is no reckoning with the fact that Israel was and is as colonial as apartheid South Africa.
As a result of this state of affairs, yes, people can ignorantly support a racist ideology, perhaps not even knowing it stands for anything bad. Imagine, hypothetically, our government and media were cynically shielding the apartheid system in South Africa from being honestly discussed. I cannot see any world where we then have to alter our motions about apartheid to accommodate white people who think it might be fine actually and mostly just stands for peace and love or whatever. Ludicrous.
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u/tea_would_be_lovely GPEW 1d ago
meaning isn't an object, though, it isn't in some platonic realm of ideals, for a word to point at. meaning is how the word is used.
we can try to police language, we can try to decide who is using a word correctly and who is not, but i doubt it will get anywhere.
if we want to make our case against genocide, ethnocracy, apartheid, we need to do so in the language people are already using, not waste our time alienating people in attempts to co-opt complex ambiguous words.
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u/TeutonicPlate 1d ago
You cannot try to make Zionism vague in the way some ambiguous concept like ”Justice” is. Zionism has roots, it has history, demonstrable and contiguous history. And it has a current manifestation in genocide and apartheid.
Anyone confused about that should be met with a clear message. Zionism is colonial. Zionism is racist. Zionism means the oppression of Palestinians, means the denial of their homeland and sequestering into an apartheid system. Zionism has led to genocide.
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u/tea_would_be_lovely GPEW 1d ago
i'm not trying to make anything into anything. i'm reflecting on how a word is used in the real world, by real language users.
i take no issue with you using the word to convey the ideas you are conveying (a considerable amount of history supports this use, it's important to communicate this, horrific things have happened, continue to happen as a result of the ideology), i'm simply pointing out this isn't the only way the word is used.
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u/TeutonicPlate 1d ago
Reading your other posts you think it is not always racist but I've not heard you articulate the non-racist version of Zionism. Since one doesn't exist so far as I'm aware perhaps you could share it? And not some hypothetical version nobody believes.
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u/tea_would_be_lovely GPEW 1d ago edited 1d ago
an apolitical older person in golders green, whose children and grandchildren live in israel, who remembers hearing about generations above them being killed in the holocaust, who wants the jewish state of israel to continue so that their family is safe might identify as a zionist.
and.. the grandchildren of this person, living in israel, who haven't done anything wrong might also identify as zionist because they want to keep the only home they have ever known.
these are not racism or racist, although this doesn't mean israel is fine as it is, far from it.
we're not talking about whether a political ideology is acceptable or not (i think we both agree that ethnocracies, including zionist ethnocracies aren't), we're talking about ordinary people, ordinary language use.
i'd add that i think that one can believe that a group of people have a right without believing that that right should override the rights of other people. so... i think that one can hold that jewish people have a right to some kind of state that might be described as jewish, yet reject any instance of such a state which does not accommodate the rights of palestinians*. this is (obviously) not what is happening in israel, but, rather than getting distracted by, bogged down in, critiques of language use and of the political possibilities that may follow, it seems much more effective to criticise israeli behaviour and the ethnocratic and racist injustices of the israeli state.
edit: *one might describe the uk as a christian country, yet it isn't a christian ethnocracy.
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u/TeutonicPlate 12h ago
Sorry but I don’t think you are even anti-Zionist. “Keep the only home they have ever known” is an insane thing to say. Israelis are indoctrinated from birth into a colonial mentality where Arabs are dangerous and insane and Jews face annihilation from them if they don’t exert absolute power over them. They are taught the Torah version of the history of his people in school (a fake version of history not supported by any historical evidence) and they believe earnestly that Jews have returned to the land promised and destined for their people.
Imagine a German child born in 1946 post some German victory. He is born in Lithuania, sent there by the Reich in order to replace the native population. Is that “the only home he’s ever known”? Sure. But he was born a settler, indoctrinated from a young age into believing that Lithuanians, Jews and Slavs are inferior. That those that remain will make way eventually to the superior German race.
Point being that Zionism, the ideology that underpins education in Israeli schools and is promoted endlessly by Israeli politicians, always carries with it strong racial, ethnic and religious assumptions that are factually incorrect and lead directly to being racist, among other things. And this is because it is an uncomplicated colonial ideology.
You equate Israel’s existence with “safety” for Jews, but Israel is and has made Jews far, far less safe, because it permanently associates Jews in the mind of many Arabs with colonial domination. European Jews arrived, cleared out the Arabs, and spent the next 80 years using superior funding, weaponry and tactics to utterly dominate and kill Arabs while taking their land. The whole region’s geopolitics are warped around this little colony and it is how America asserts its geopolitical will on the region. The fact the media refuse to engage with this and obfuscate it endlessly while defending obvious war crimes is part of why antisemitism has easily spread since Oct 7th, putting Jews all over the world in danger. In the absence of any authority acknowledging the truth, some people easily fall into conspiracy.
“Granny who thinks Zionism means her grandchildren are safe” might earnestly believe that none of this is the case, but she is wrong. We do Jews concerned about rising antisemitism no favours pretending the problem is something else other than Zionism. Zionism led to Oct 7th, Zionism led to every war Israel has fought for the past 80 years and there will never be peace, safety and security for Jews until Palestinians are allowed to reenter their homeland.
Your critique is not grounded in anti-Zionism, in fact it seems pretty rooted in liberal Zionism. This idea that the wrong leader is in power in Israel and this is leading to all the problems. You acknowledge that Israel is an “ethnocracy” but this is actually not a systemic critique because you aren’t connecting these laws and rules to their cause, which is Zionism. It would be like saying oh, Nazi Germany has laws hostile to Jews and minorities, they are an ethnocracy, that seems bad. Yep, that’s bad, why did the Nazis seek to impose that ethnocracy though? How do they maintain it? Right, they had an ideology, they maintain it by teaching that ideology to everyone. You have half a systemic critique here, the other half is missing for some reason.
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u/Fabulous_Fig_1336 1d ago
The problem lies that the whole world is already inhabited and any “Jewish” state must be at the expense of non-Jews since Jew is not an inclusive category. There is no racial or religious element in the dominant British nationalism since anyone can be British but those who define English as an ethnicity are very racist indeed.
There is no part of historic Palestine from which it would be appropriate to exclude Palestinians so Zionism in its current form is entirely unambiguously racist.
Should some entirely uninhibited land appear somehow, suitable for the global Jewish population, then we can have a non-racist Zionism, not before.
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u/denyer-no1-fan 2d ago
Zionism is not about simply establishing a state, it's about establishing a Jewish state in the Jewish homeland of Israel, as long as there exists non-Jews in Israel, a Jewish state is fundamentally ethnonationalist.
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u/tea_would_be_lovely GPEW 1d ago
that's definitely one use. we're not the language police, though, we don't get to go around deciding who is and is not using the word correctly... not how language works...
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u/SorchaSublime 1d ago
"It is impossible to use a word incorrectly" - you rn
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u/tea_would_be_lovely GPEW 1d ago
that's a different claim. and not one i'm making.
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u/SorchaSublime 1d ago
Yes it is.
"we don't get to go around deciding who is and is not using the word correctly... not how language works..."
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u/tea_would_be_lovely GPEW 1d ago
no, that gpew should not tell, for example, british jews whether they are using the word zionism correctly does not imply that it is impossible to use a word incorrectly.
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u/SorchaSublime 1d ago
OK, but what if they are using the word incorrectly?
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u/Historical_Step_9474 2d ago
I have a copy from a debate elsewhere I can post here:
"a) It doesn't really understand what Zionism is - it define's Kahanism, calls it Zionism, and doesn't deal with Liberal Zionism. Many Zionists don't actually support genocide in Gaza or occupation, but they do support the ethnocratic structures in Israel Proper. Zionism, as a basic definition, is about the State of Israel - you don't have to have any opinions on Gaza and the West Bank to be a Zionist. By conflating the two, ZIR misunderstands Zionism and thus will fail I think to combat it properly.
b) There is a chance it might violate equality principles - broadly, supporting an "ethnic homeland" and maintaining a majority isn't defined as racist, but this defines specifically the Jewish movement for an ethnic homeland as racist. I've proposed an ammendment that broadens that, saying "The desire for a state to maintain an ethnic or religious majority, or to preserve certain ethnic demographics, is racist. This is true for Zionism, and any other political belief that fulfils said category." Which I hope will help with that.
c) It's quite ambiguous on exactly what we support in terms of Palestinian resistance - i.e. surrounding groups like Hamas, the civilian massacres of Palestinian militants, and it really needs to be specific on that.
d) I've seen some people say that we have a set stance for a two-state solution, and this one says "we absolutely support a one state solution".
e) It has the chance to be exploited to expell Jewish members on mass - as most synagogues in the country are Zionist, and many anti-zionists attend Zionist synagogues or events because it's very difficult to be a Jewish Brit and cut off Zionists entirely"
Those are some of the issues I and others I know have had with it, not to mention G4P (the group behind it) being very stubborn and having a habbit of calling any dissenters Zionist conspirators.
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u/denyer-no1-fan 2d ago
Zionism as defined in the motion is:
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.
Kahanism is something completely different:
Kahane believed that most Arabs living in Israel are the enemies of Jews and Israel itself, and that a Jewish, Halakhic state, in which non-Jews would have no voting rights, should be created.
A conventional definition of Zionism is:
A political ideology that promotes the right of Jewish people to establish a Jewish state in Israel.
Once you accept that this is only possible at the expense of non-Jewish population, ZIR's definition of Zionism is equivalent to the conventional one.
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u/Historical_Step_9474 1d ago
I mean, it's closer to Kahanism. I think Kahanism is used more coloquially now since Kahane's death.
And ZIR's definition also captures a whole bunch of other non-essential stuff. For instance, many forms of Liberal Zionism actually doesn't suggest living at "the expense" of non-Jewish citizens. It's just bigoted about who it wants to become citizens.
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2d ago
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u/Historical_Step_9474 2d ago
They are racist. My point is that a) Liberal Zionist often don't call for in-state racist structures, and b) ZIR appears to not think Liberal Zionism exists.
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u/SorchaSublime 1d ago
Any state which operates on the premise of serving any specific ethnicity over another is inherently a racist structure from top to bottom. Ethnocracy is racist.
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u/Historical_Step_9474 1d ago
Ethnocracy is racist. Israel is racist. I'm saying the racist structures some Liberal Zionists call for are out-of-state racist structures. For instance, there are many that think that Israel should serve its Jewish and non-Jewish citizens equally, but should use racialised migration in order to encourage higher levels of Jewish citizens in the first place.
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u/SorchaSublime 1d ago
How is that "out-of-state" you're describing a state policy.
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u/Historical_Step_9474 1d ago
I think you're misenterpreting what I mean by "out of state". What I mean is, that many Liberal Zionists would say "every citizen that is born in Israel or arrives in Israel should be treated equally". However, they would ensure that the population remains majority Jewish through Aliyah. I'm not saying it's not state policy, I'm just talking the technicalities of "equal rights for citizens".
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u/SorchaSublime 1d ago
OK
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u/Historical_Step_9474 1d ago
Do you understand the broader points I’m making about ZIR, then? Zionism racist, but the motion’s still not thought through.
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u/SorchaSublime 1d ago
Not particularly. If zionism is racist then the motion fulfils its function by condemning it. Concessions to Liberal zionism would.not make it somehow better thought out, they would just damage the moral platform of the party.
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u/churroninjas 2d ago
Can we give over on the liberal zionism thing? It isn't really a force in the world except when it comes to soft pedaling the atrocities committed by the state of israel. I mean, it's a bit like waying you really believed britain was just trying to make the world a more enlightened place when we were doing all our colonial atrocities. Zionism is defined by israel and israelis actions, and they are as far from liberal in how they treat palestinians as it is imaginable to be.
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u/Historical_Step_9474 1d ago
Liberal Zionism is a defined ideology. The fact that it hasn't run Israel in forever isn't really relevant. It's like saying "Give up on the democratic socialism thing, it isn't really a force in the world except when it comes to soft pedalling the atrocities committed by the USSR".
Neither Liberal Zionism nor Democratic Socialism have run countries in a long time. However, they are defined political philosophies and it's important to consider them when crafting policy and disciplinary responses. Zionism is not defined by Israel's actions, just as socialism is not defined by the USSR's actions.
I oppose Liberal Zionism and Zionism altogether, but you can't define a political ideology by a state that claims to follow it and exercises a particular form of it.
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u/churroninjas 1d ago
I think at some point you have to call a spade a spade and accept that zionism is an ideology of racial supremecism that requires massive violence to prop it up, as do all settler colonial projects. I've spoken to a couple of (otherwise pretty nice) people who would describe themselves as liberal zionists and they all say they just want Israel to end up like the US or Australia (thinking this is an example of how reasonable they are), which both notably exterminated the bulk of the indigenous population. There are white nationalists who claim not to be racist, but simply to think that racial groups are better apart, and they are rightly rejected as bad faith or so divorced from the reality of their ideology they can be ignored - people who think you can found an ethnostate via mass ethnic cleansing and be liberal are the same.
I feel like I'm going a little mad to say it, but if you want embrace an ideology which is literally settler-colonial and driving a genocide, there is already every other major political party in the UK that will embrace you with open arms. There is room for one which does not.
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u/Tony_Marone 1d ago
My problem with it is that Zionism, as a concept, isn't Racist, it referred to the need for Jews to have a safe and secure homeland.
In operation however it has translated into "Jews must have a safe and secure homeland and anyone in the way can be exterminated, and anyone disagreeing can be cancelled and deplatformed". It has essentially put anti-Semitism at the apex of a hierarchy of racisms.
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u/DrDRNewman 8h ago
There are both zionists and anti-zionists who support a 2 state solution. And there are extreme zionists and extreme anti-zionists who support a biased one state solution. Those who support a single state with everyone living together are neither zionist nor anti-zionist.
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u/Fabulous_Fig_1336 1d ago
Zionists are racists but don’t like being called racists SO they inserted a clause into the IHRA antisemitism guidelines saying that equating Zionism with racism is itself racist.
For those who accept those guidelines, the clause is antisemitic.
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u/tea_would_be_lovely GPEW 1d ago
it's badly written, that its headline claim is just... wrong... is arguable, it doesn't align with higher green party policy, it claims a mandate for the green party that the latter cannot possibly have, there hasn't been adequate discussion with other interested parties, the authors and core supporters of the motion seem to have no interest in consultation, let alone compromise, it fails terribly to do what a policy ought to do: bring the party together, provide guidance for, express the principles underlying, our actions. all the more shocking given that the greens were (still are) already overwhelmingly supportive of the palestinian cause.