Greens drop candidate after JN exposes 7 Oct conspiracy posts and hostage tribute attack

The Green Party has dropped a local election candidate after Jewish News revealed he posted “false flag” lies about October 7 and tore down hostage solidarity balloons.

A Green Party spokesperson confirmed to Jewish News last night: “We can confirm that Bernard Mani is no longer a Green Party candidate.”

The embarrassing decision came only hours after Zack Polanski had launched the Greens’ election campaign in south London, where he chose to focus on condemnation of Israel at the start of his speech rather than local matters.

Mani had been set to stand in the Forest Hill ward in the London borough of Lewisham at next month’s election, but the revelations provoked widespread anger and calls for party deputy leader Zack Polanski to remove him as a candidate.

Video footage showed Mani pulling down balloons at a display intended to raise awareness of the plight of Israeli hostages, held in Hove, Sussex, just one month after Hamas carried out its attacks in southern Israel.

Social media posts purportedly from Mani also appear to show him backing claims that Israel “killed its own people” on 7 October and then “covered it up to justify genocide.”

Responding to a post showing a photo of a man holding a placard making the “false flag” claims, Mani wrote “Yes” in response to another poster asking, “Is this true?”

In another post, Mani appeared to respond to an accusation that Palestinian terrorists had murdered “a baby, a toddler and their mother” by writing, “They were killed by an IDF bomb, just like most of the 1000s of kids in Gaza.”

The discussion appeared to be in response to the murder of Israeli hostages Shiri Bibas, four-year-old Ariel, and nine-month-old Kfir by Hamas terrorists.

In an interview with Channel 4 News, Polanski was asked about the new candidates and problems around antisemitism. He admitted it would be “disingenuous” to say he was aware of everything that candidates might have said in the past, but said he had been clear about the values of his party, adding that they stood against antisemitism and any form of hate crime.

In November 2023, Mani — who had been attending a separate demonstration organised by the Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign — was filmed pulling down the balloons while carrying a large Palestinian flag. He claimed the balloons were from “someone else’s demonstration.”

The local Jewish community had been staging a solidarity rally following the Hamas massacre at a time when the terror group and its affiliates were still holding 240 people hostage. Mani was reportedly quickly removed from the area by a Sussex Police liaison officer.

The Daily Mail published a story on the incident at the time, although Mani was not identified in the article.

Solicitor General and Labour MP for Lewisham West and East Dulwich Ellie Reeves posted on X: “I am appalled by the views of the Green Party candidate in Forest Hill. This man is not fit to be a councillor.”

Labour Mayor of Lewisham Brenda Dacres also wrote to Polanski calling for the Greens to “immediately remove” Mani as a candidate, saying that spreading conspiracy theories about 7 October was “deeply hurtful not just to the Jewish community in Lewisham, but across the world.”