UK Green motion on Zionism: Why we need to change the conversation
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/54172205
By equating Zionism with racism, the party has sparked a predictable wave of outrage. But are we debating the right questions?
16 October 2026
At the same time, the discourse around the motion has centred on how people define themselves, rather than on the realities of the racist oppression Palestinians face.
Some within the movement are comfortable with that focus. A year ago, I was asked at a conference whether I agreed that the problem with Zionism was not its impact upon Palestinians, but its essential character as a racist ideology. In response, I paraphrased civil rights leader Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael): “If a man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem.”
This does not mean that we compromise on our understanding of Zionism and the realities of the oppression of Palestinians. It does mean that we avoid building roadblocks to people becoming part of the mass movement for change.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/uk-green-motion-zionism-why-we-need-change-conversationOpen linkView original on lemmy.ml
4 replies
God forbid anyone mention that being Palestinian in the West Bank is the same as being black in the American south a the 1950's.
After all, if we really started talking about it, then we couldn't justify selling Israel billions of dollars worth of weapons to use in committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing.
So a party finally takes a stand, and the reaction is tone policing. I'm sure it would have been a more effective strategy to have instead approved a 300-page, highly nuanced policy analysis.
Any exclusive chauvinist nationalist, colonialist ideology is inherently racist. Zionism concerns itself with a single ethno-religious group, so it meets the first criterion. And its goal has been to colonize Palestine, so it meets the second as well. Even the less murderous forms of zionism differ from the bloodthirsty mainstream largely on the issue of how well or badly to treat the indigenous underclass.
You're saying "tone policing" to ridicule it, but as a political party that needs to attract the general public to get elected - yeah, policing tone is actually kinda important. Not saying everything should be bland or a 300-page nuanced policy analysis, but you need to bring people with you, not alienate them.
Sometimes you do that by speaking the unvarnished truth, not by tone policing.