UK Green Party votes to recognize Zionism as racism

At its annual conference in Brighton on Sunday, the UK Green Party voted to recognize Zionism as racism. The resolution, which describes Zionism as "a nationalist political project," passed by 1,022 votes to 813, despite opposition from some of the party's MPs as well as former party leader Caroline Lucas.

The vote sent shockwaves through British politics, with many commentators taking to television and social media to condemn it, accusing the party of antisemitism and even arguing the resolution puts Jewish people in danger.

However, according to analysts, the Green Party resolution declares nothing radical or unusual. Zionism has been and remains a settler-colonial ideology, and settler colonialism is inherently racist. The ideology revolves around the belief that Jews from anywhere in the world have a right to a homeland in historic Palestine – a right said to be superior to that of any other people.

This is a belief based on biblical claims about a land and an ahistorical reading of history. Crucially, the realization of that belief required the seizure and dispossession of the land of the indigenous Palestinian people.

Defining Zionism as a settler-colonial ideology should not be controversial, especially when the movement's own founders proudly described it as such. Vladimir Jabotinsky, a revisionist Zionist thinker of the early 20th century, wrote that "the colonization of Zionism... must be carried out regardless of the will of the native population."

Theodor Herzl, often considered the father of political Zionism, once hoped to establish contact with Cecil Rhodes, the colonialist who led Britain's colonization of Zimbabwe. In a famous but never-sent draft letter, Herzl invited Rhodes to "help make history," reasoning that "this is a colonial matter."

The early institutions of the Zionist movement also reflected a colonial self-identification through names such as the Jewish Colonial Trust, the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, and the Colonization Department of the Jewish Agency.

Zionism is also not a unique ideology. It followed the path of other ideologies that typically stemmed from the notion of "manifest destiny" – ideologies that shaped settler-colonial entities and genocides against indigenous peoples to ensure the survival of the colonial project.

In fact, what is happening in Palestine is not an isolated event but part of a global history of violent tactics and dispossession aimed at eliminating indigenous peoples and entrenching settler-colonial control over land.

The Green Party is not the first organization to define Zionism as racism in an official position. In 1975, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379 declaring Zionism a form of racism and racial discrimination. The resolution passed with 72 votes in favor, 35 against and 32 abstentions, building on earlier statements that year by the Organization of African Unity and the Non-Aligned Movement.

Unsurprisingly, the resolution was supported by Global South countries, which understood how colonial ideologies operate. Many compared the Zionist regime to apartheid South Africa.

The resolution was eventually revoked in 1991 under US pressure and with Soviet approval. Israel made the revocation a condition for attending the Madrid peace conference co-sponsored by Washington and Moscow. The revocation reflected a shift in the geopolitical balance of power, amid the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, rather than a reconsideration of global perceptions of Zionism.

That a mainstream British party has returned to the position Global South countries put forward on the international stage five decades ago is noteworthy. In the British political and historical context, this is a small but significant step toward confronting the country's dark legacy of facilitating the creation of a Zionist state on Palestinian land and contributing to the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Whether the Green Party can hold its ground against the enormous pressure it will certainly face and avoid concessions to placate critics remains an unanswered question.

Meanwhile, as all this unfolds in Western media coverage, the genocide in Palestine continues, and what gets lost in the noise is the material reality of Zionism for Palestinians on the ground. For more than a century, this ideology has brought untold devastation and destruction upon the Palestinian people. The Green Party resolution did not create this history – it only named it.

The views in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.