Israel has barred the leader of Britain’s Green Party Zack Polanski from entering the country after the party’s members voted to define Zionism as racism.
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar took the decision on Sunday evening, hours after the vote at the left-wing party’s annual conference, Israel’s foreign ministry said. It called the resolution “a clear antisemitic text” and described the ban on Polanski as a “first step”.
“The Greens have adopted not only the green of Hamas, but also its ideology: the elimination of the State of Israel through armed struggle,” the ministry said.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, called the party’s decision “a disgrace”.
“Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, and it forms the basis for the Jewish people’s right to a state and a national home in the Land of Israel,” Herzog said on X.
The motion passed by 1,022 votes to 813. It states that Zionism will be “treated as any other form of racism” and commits the party to supporting a “single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine”.
Jewish groups warn over safety
The vote comes at a time of heightened fear among British Jews. The Board of Deputies of British Jews said the motion stoked “anti-Jewish hatred after a year in which British Jews have been murdered attending their synagogue, stabbed in the streets, and seen their community buildings firebombed”.
Two worshippers were killed in an attack on a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur last year. In March, ambulances run by a Jewish volunteer service were set alight in Golders Green, north London, the first in a string of arson attacks on synagogues and other Jewish sites in the capital. Two Jewish men were stabbed in the same neighbourhood in April.
Last week, two Iranian nationals were charged over an alleged plot to carry out an attack in Manchester around this year’s Yom Kippur.
The Community Security Trust, which monitors antisemitism, recorded 1,926 incidents in the first half of 2026, its second-highest half-year total, including a record 135 assaults.
Ahead of the Green Party vote, the heads of the Board of Deputies, the Community Security Trust and the Jewish Leadership Council wrote to the party.
“This motion would make the Green Party the first electorally significant UK political party in living memory to adopt what appears to be an overtly antisemitic political platform,” they said.
UK parties condemn vote
Bridget Phillipson, chair of the ruling Labour Party and minister for women and equalities, condemned the decision.
“It is shameful to vote against a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine and to condemn the vast majority of British Jews and Jews around the world as racist for supporting Israel’s right to exist,” she said in a party statement.
The opposition Conservatives described the Greens as “toxic to its core”.
“British Jews should not have to disclaim a belief in Jewish self-determination and the existence of Israel in order to be accepted by a British political party,” said Chris Philp, the party’s shadow home secretary.
Divisions in the party
“This has been a serious and deeply felt debate within our membership,” a Green spokesperson said.
In a joint statement, Polanski and the party’s MPs said there was “no conflict between supporting the rights of Palestinians and the rights of Jewish people”.
The motion exposed divisions in the party. At least three of its five MPs opposed it, and Polanski, who is running to become an MP in former prime minister Keir Starmer’s London constituency, skipped the vote.
He said earlier this week that the “displacement and genocide of the Palestinian people” was “clearly racism”.
United Nations investigators have accused Israel of committing “genocide” in the war in Gaza, a finding that Israel has rejected.
The Greens, who hold five of the 650 seats in Britain’s parliament, have surged in popularity under Polanski, attracting voters dissatisfied with the centre-left Labour government’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war. Polls show his popularity has taken a hit in recent months following several missteps.