London, United Kingdom – The British Palestinian woman behind the "Zionism is racism" motion passed by the England and Wales Green Party earlier this month says she has received death and rape threats since the vote.
In an interview with Al Jazeera on Thursday, Green Party member Lubna Speitan, an artist and activist, said she had received dozens of threatening messages and emails on social media and had reported them to police.
"These threats were anticipated," Speitan said, describing them as a form of "intimidation" by aggressive pro-Israel elements.
While "no one wants to be the target of death threats," she said, "confronting this ugliness is necessary."
The Green Party passed the motion by 1,022 votes to 813 at its party conference in Brighton, but it has been condemned by nearly every other British political party and has caused turmoil within the Greens' own ranks.
Several left-wing members of the party have spoken out against the move, and on Thursday Prime Minister Andy Burnham ruled out working with the party, calling the motion "wrong" and "antisemitic."
The motion defines Zionism – the belief that Jews have a historical right to Palestine – as a form of racism, rooted in the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Palestinians made up more than 90 percent of the population in 1917, when Britain declared its support for establishing a Jewish state there.
The motion backs Palestinian self-determination and calls for a single democratic state across historic Palestine for both Muslims and Jews. It also states that anti-Zionism should not be equated with antisemitism.
'Personally smeared'
Fifty-six members of Speitan's family have been killed since Israel launched its genocidal war in Gaza three years ago.
"Zionism is clearly defined as a nationalist settler-colonial project. The motion also rightly recognises that not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jewish," she said. "It targets an ideology: Zionism."
She added that she had been "personally smeared" by media outlets.
Recent headlines in the British press accused her of being a "friend" of an "al-Qaeda terrorist," after she was said to have offered to testify in defence of Minh Quang Pham, a British citizen who plotted to attack Heathrow Airport.
"This tactic of guilt by association will not be dignified with a response," Speitan said of the reports.
The England and Wales Green Party told Al Jazeera that Speitan holds no position in the party "beyond membership."
"The Green Party takes any allegation of this kind seriously. When members express views that do not align with the party's values, we have internal processes to investigate, and an investigation is under way," it said.
Media watchdog NewsCord, after reviewing coverage of the motion, concluded that opponents of the motion received 10 times as much news coverage as supporters.
The Green Party is not the first Western political organisation to classify Zionism as a form of racism. In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring Zionism a racist ideology. Seventy-two countries voted in favour, 35 opposed and 32 abstained. The resolution was later repealed in 1991.
