A flagship London council has unanimously passed a motion declaring that “Zionism is not racism” after Conservative and Labour members teamed up to draft the policy.
At a meeting of Westminster Council on Wednesday evening, Tory councillor Hannah Galley, who proposed the motion, said she had the “utter privilege” of representing a ward with a large Jewish community, but over the past two years had witnessed “deeply distressing” intimidation and hatred directed at the community.
But Cllr Galley then added that the consequences of the Green Party’s incendiary Zionism is racism motion, passed at its annual conference last month, were felt by Jewish people in her borough and across the county, and only added to questions by some about their very futures in the UK.
Seconding the motion for Labour, Councillor David Boothroyd said that under international law “all peoples have the right to self-determination” and “Zionism is an application of that right.”
He noted that the Green Party’s motion “is an attack on every conception of Israel” and that the policy adopted by Zack Polanski’s party “is itself discriminatory.”
The full council meeting unanimously backed the joint motion, initially by a show of hands. Officers then agreed to a Tory Group request to ask each councillor present to confirm they had voted for the motion.
Those not in attendance at Wednesday’s meeting will now be asked to confirm the way they would vote.
The motion v states: “Support for the Jewish people’s right to self-determination is not racist” and asked the town hall chief executive, Stuart Love, to review the local authority’s “equality, diversity and community cohesion training and policies” to ensure that they “do not treat Jewish residents’ support for Jewish self-determination as a form of racism”.
The motion adds: “Criticism of the policies and actions of the Israeli Government is legitimate and is not antisemitic.
“But declaring Zionism to be racism goes far beyond such criticism: it brands most British Jews as racists because of a part of their identity, and risks leaving Jewish residents feeling unwelcome in public life.
“The Green Party’s position is incompatible with the council’s duty to foster good relations between communities.”
The Green motion, which was passed at the party’s conference last month, described Zionism as an ideology supporting “an ethno-nationalist Jewish state in historic Palestine to the exclusion and/or domination of the non-Jewish population”.
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