By Haim Bresheeth-Žabner

The Zionist lobby started working overtime to get the motion rejected by the committee structure responsible for the conference agenda.

Over the last week, as the brutal, illegal war against Iran was moving to its long-term modalities, we have watched, horrified, as the Zionist partners in crime have turned day into night in Tehran, engulfing millions in a black rain, constricting breath, and poisoning the earth.

This was followed by toxic bonfires in oil fields across Arabia, as well as in Israel, not only contributing to Global Warming, but also contaminating the soil, the sea and the earth around them. This came after we watched Gaza being pulverized into concrete dust and the surrealist landscapes of hell on earth, in which no life may survive and flourish. Whole swathes of West Asia have been turned into a nightmarish scenery of death and devastation, credited to the Israeli masters of doom. Those who calculate the pace of Global Warming never took into account the most damaging of human interventions – massive, wanton military destruction.

Context: UK Mad Hatter Political Elections

The Green Party in the UK has for last few decades been unable to elect more than a single MP, due to the odd proclivities of the British electoral system, one designed for two large parties fighting it out in local constituencies of typically less than 100,000 voters, even when the party hit 10%-15% of voters in a constituency, the traditional parties would easily defeat it. The result was that millions of Green voters had no representation in the British House of Commons. They may have garnered millions of votes across Britain, but won in no constituency because these millions were divided between 650 local constituencies.

The party has expanded its support base, but until 2024, this had no real results. In the 2024 elections, the party ended up with 4 MPs. That does not sound impressive at about much less that 1% of the House of Commons seats, but it quadrupled the party’s seats overnight, proving that the Green Party can win in progressive regions. In comparison, the right-wing Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party, with less than 8% of the votes won by the Green Party, controlled 5 seats! The reason is simple: they all live in a small area made up of Protestant inhabitants, mainly of Belfast.

Then, last year, in the wake of the election of Zack Polansky, a young, energetic, and likeable Jewish candidate as the new leader, the ‘Mamdani-effect’ began making a difference. Like his American counterpart, Polansky backed opposition to the Gaza genocide, collecting new members from declining parties, mainly Labour but also the eponymously-named Your Party, brainchild of Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana – two refugees from the Labour Party of Kier Starmer, a Zionized entity shedding members and voters due to its unprincipled support of genocidal Israel.

On the face of it, Starmer has nothing to worry about. With 412 MPs out of a Parliament of 650 seats, he seems safe enough – this is one of the most massive majorities in the electoral history of Britain. But the devil, bless him, is in the detail.

Starmer, a less-than-popular Labour leader, received only 33.7% of the vote – a mere third of the electorate! S How come he ended with two-thirds of the MPs? The reason is simple – the right-wing vote was divided between two parties, the older Conservative Party, itself a wreck, and the rising Reform Party of the racist extreme right. In a sense, they knocked each other out, leaving the field to Labour, which, with a very low percentage, could win in an ‘empty’ field. Jeremy Corbyn, as Labour leader in 2019, lost the election to Boris Johnson, getting 32.2% of the vote, and thus garnering 203 MPS in Parliament, less than half. So though Starmer got only 1.5% more than Corbyn in 2019, he won more than twice the MPs and controls the Commons. This is how mad the system is. Almost anything may happen.

The current predictions are very interesting but also terrifying. Labour is likely, if elections were held today, to win less than 20% of the vote, and end up with anywhere between 18 seats and 257 seats! Reform, a Party involved in many scandals in its three-year history, is likely to take 28.5% of the vote and end up with 308 seats, as the largest party but without an overall majority. The Greens will end up as the fourth largest party, with 14.1% of the vote and 56 seats! Thus, the winners of the election will be Reform and the Greens – two parties that can never combine to form a government!

Now there is some support for this prediction from the latest by-election, which took place on February 26 earlier this year. Labour, which held the seat with a large majority, lost exactly half of its electoral strength, mainly to the Green Party, which almost doubled its strength to take 40.7% of the vote. And they did that by presenting a local woman plumber with a combination of green localism and attacking Labour and Reform for their foreign policies, especially their support of the Gaza genocide. Not only has Labour lost the seat to the Green Party, but it has also moved to third place, after Reform; Reform was the favourite to win the seat and was defeated strongly by the Greens, who ran a progressive and anti-racist campaign. Surely there is much to learn from this election.

What followed is also of great interest. Over the last couple of months, a large group led by the Palestinian artist and activist Lubna Speitan has carefully crafted a detailed Motion to be discussed at the GP Spring Conference on March 28. The motion, titled Zionism is Racism, takes its title from the troubled history of a UN Resolution 3379 of the General Assembly, passed on November 10, 1975. It equated Zionism with Apartheid and backed by the USSR and the Arab countries, was supported by a large majority. This Resolution was revoked after the fall of the Soviet Union, on December 16, 1991, through pressure from the US and Israel, with support from the West.

The GP Motion is more detailed than the UN Resolution, referring also to political solutions to the Zionist Settler-Colonial project, suggesting decolonisation and an end to Zionism through a single democratic state in Palestine, freeing Palestine from the colonial rule by a Zionist state.  In media interviews, Zack Polansky gave the motion guarded backing despite mainstream media fury, accusations of antisemitism, and much Islamophobia to boot. He argued, incorrectly, that Zionism was not originally racist, but said that since the arrival of Netanyahu, “this Israeli government is clearly perpetrating through a genocide in Gaza, then yes, absolutely. That’s racist.” The Telegraph put no fine point on it: “Alex Hearn from Labour Against Antisemitism said:… (T)he Green Party must crack down and start doing due diligence on new members, before it becomes nothing more than a vehicle for racists.”

The Zionist lobby started working overtime to get the motion rejected by the committee structure responsible for the conference agenda. The Deputy leader of the party, the Muslim Mothin Ali, pointed out that “Anti-Semitism is being used as a “weapon” to silence criticism of Israel”. Lubna Speitan clarified the motion: “In a public statement, Speitan called Zionism “the ideological underpinning of an ethnonationalist Jewish State in historic Palestine, to the exclusion and domination of the non-Jewish population.”

The views expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Palestine Chronicle.