Leap of faith: the Greens are fanboys of Hamas

The phrase ‘jumping the shark’ – coined in response to the creative downfall of the American sitcom Happy Days after the character of Fonzie did just that – means that a work or entity has reached a point at which it has exhausted its core intent and is introducing new ideas that are discordant with its original theme or purpose.

This is what the Green Party of England and Wales has managed to do in passing its ‘Zionism is Racism’ resolution.

The ideology of the Green Party could once be described as combining environmentalism with left-wing economic policies. It has now totally transformed: the formerly left-wing party has become the party of anti-Zionism.

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The Greens have become fanboys of Hamas, which only supports one policy – the murder of Jews wherever they find them, ironically including Jews who might be members of the Green Party and committed anti-Zionists at that.

In 1945, George Orwell wrote: “A Communist is one who looks upon the USSR as his Fatherland and feels it his duty to justify Russian policy and advance Russian interests at all costs.”

Substitute “anti-Zionist” for Communist, and “Palestine” for the USSR, and you have today’s Green Party.

The party rejected an amendment that would have graciously allowed Jewish members of the Green Party to retain their Green credentials, even though they might go to a synagogue that failed in its moral duty to denounce Zionism.

This was a favour to Jews in the Green Party, making it an easy choice: be a Green or be a Jew. You can’t be both.

You could try to maintain your Green credentials by being plus royaliste que le roi – more anti-Semitic than a Green anti-Semite. But just as Jews in Germany in 1939 could attempt to abandon their Jewish identity, it failed to save them from destruction, and this is likely to be true in the Green Party as well.

A Jew in the Green Party will now be forever tainted by his or her unfortunate origins in Judaism. Can a Green really trust a Jew?

The Greens have also managed to move the argument away from “is it possible to be an anti-Zionist without being antisemitic?” The Green Party is perfectly happy to be antisemitic. The party is now on the same page as the unabashedly antisemitic former USSR in the 1970s, when it put forward its own ‘Zionism is Racism’ allegation. It is hard to see much air between the USSR then and the Green Party now.

Happy Days dragged on after Fonzie jumped the shark, and no doubt the Green Party will continue to be something, if nothing like what used to be Green. But the resolution has brought together, in their rejection of it, Jews of a wide variety of beliefs and opinions about Israel and Zionism.

Whether you support or protest against the Israeli Government, whether you love Benjamin Netanyahu or hate him, if you’re a Jew, the Greens hate you, and now we have it in writing.

Rabbi Gershon Silins is at Hertfordshire Progressive Synagogue