Zack Polanski’s claims to have ‘partly co-founded’ Jewish Greens contested

Zack Polanski’s claims to have “partly co-founded” the Jewish Greens group inside the party he now leads have been contested, with sources suggesting that while he attended the group’s inaugural meeting, he didn’t join its leadership committee until years later.

As reported by The Times, on Sunday Polanski was responding to comments by Vivien Lichtenstein, the chair and founder of Jewish Greens, who has called for him to resign in the wake of the Green Party’s adoption of a “Zionism is Racism” motion and refusal to accept an amendment designed to protect Jewish members who attend Synagogues. It was during that response that Polanski made the claim regarding his role in the formation of the Jewish Greens group.

A spokeswoman for Polanski told The Times that “Zack was one of around ten members present at the founding meeting of the Jewish Greens at Green Party autumn conference 2018. Those present discussed and voted on the original aims and scope to form the Jewish Greens.”

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However, while not denying that Polanski was “apparently” an attendee of the inaugural meeting of the group at the Green Party conference in 2018, a source told Jewish News that he was not particularly well-known in the party at that time, given he had defected from the Liberal Democrats a year before and it was “his first conference” as a Green party member.

“He didn’t join the Jewish Greens Committee until 2020”, the source told Jewish News.

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“Vivien has told him several times since he became Leader to stop claiming he’s a co-founder.”

This is not the first time questions have been raised regarding Polanski’s description of his involvement in previous roles. Earlier this year, he apologised after the Red Cross made it clear that despite Polanski having referred to himself as having previously been a spokesperson for the charity, this was not the case. The Green party leader said that he had hosted some fundraisers for the charity, where he “would go on stage and speak for them”, but acknowledged that his previous description had been unclear. Similarly, in 2020 Polanski claimed on a campaign website that he was “currently working at the Ministry of Justice on their training & diversity programmes.” When asked about it this year, the MoJ said that it had no record of Polanski ever working there. It emerged that he had been hired as an actor via a third-party agency to engage in role-playing scenarios, to help a quango appointing judges.

Prior to the “Zionism is Racism” motion, Polanski publicly said that he was “equivocating” when he was asked about the issue. By the time the motion came to the party conference floor on Sunday 4 October, the Green party leader had left, ostensibly due to the need to campaign in the Holborn & St Pancras by-election, which he subsequently lost. However, the Green party provided options for members who had signed up for conference to vote remotely – a function which Polanski did not avail himself of.

Despite significant criticism from within the Jewish community, including from the heads of all the major denominations of Judaism, who have variously described the motion as both “racist” and “antisemitic”, Polanski has confirmed that he will not seek to overturn the party’s new policy. Jewish Green party members are reportedly seeking to challenge the policy and court, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has written to the Greens asking for clarification.