Jewish Green activists defy pro-Israel rally at UK party conference

Jewish Green Party activists held a counter-protest in response to a pro-Israel rally outside the party's conference in Brighton on Saturday, telling The New Arab that they refuse to allow anti-Zionism to be conflated with antisemitism.

Police divided the two groups outside the Brighton Centre, where the pro-Zionist group waved Israeli flags and played songs by pro-Israel singer Boy George. The protesters accused the Green Party of being "racist", and branded those who support the Palestinian cause as "antisemitic".

"They're claiming that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, again, associating Jews with this apartheid racist ideology…I think that's an antisemitic thing to claim," Ori Neumann, spokesperson for Jews Against Zionism, told The New Arab.

"We say that Judaism, as its essence, is about liberation of the oppressed; it's about community, and we want to start reclaiming Judaism from Zionism."

The pro-Israelis were seen following those waving the Palestinian flag or wearing the keffiyeh, accusing them of being supporters of terrorism, as well as crossing the police line to take photos of pro-Palestine protesters.

"They have a right to their opinion, but their opinion is wrong. We need to stop an ethno-supremacist state," Zayeet Za'it, a Jewish activist for Palestine, told The New Arab.

"There are Jews here, and there are Jews here, all over the world, who believe in not only peace, but that not in our name, there should not be a genocide, there should not be apartheid, there should not be Israeli occupation of Palestine."

"Many, many, many Jews like myself believe that we are international or part of the world, and we should be able to live everywhere in the peace, and it's not okay for someone to claim they have a Jewish state and then to commit genocide, apartheid, occupation."

Changed views

Some protesters who spoke to The New Arab said Israel's genocidal war on Gaza and other atrocities had changed their previously positive view of Tel Aviv and its government.

"I believe that Israel actually is now a failing state that is possibly going to implode, but is subject to lies and propaganda," Marion Adler, member of Jews Against the Occupation in Brighton and Hove, told The New Arab,  adding that she once believed that Israel was a progressive, welcoming state.

"I would like to know why they are dancing, when children are dying and are hungry," Adler said, referring to the pro-Israeli group.

"[Israel's supporters] don't get it. They will not open their eyes to the realities of decades of an apartheid state that looks only at the Jewish Israeli population and will never grant justice to the Palestinian people. They don't want them. They never did, from 1948 onwards. I didn't know this when I was young."

For Alan Schechner, it was not until he served in the Israeli army that he saw firsthand the reality of Israel's occupation.

"[Pro-Israelis are] coming from a place where they think everyone hates the Jews, another holocaust is imminent, and that Israel is their only insurance policy and that anyone who speaks up against Israel must be, by definition, antisemitic," Schechner told The New Arab.

"These people here, Jews against Zionism, also probably came from a similar, traditional home. But what they learnt from the holocaust, and what they learnt from the persecution of Jews, is not that we should support a genocidal state, that we should ensure that genocide doesn't happen for anyone."

"So same routes, same trauma, but these people have done some work on themselves, and those people unfortunately haven't."

Members of the Green Party are also set to vote on the Zionism is racism motion on Sunday, calling for the party to define Zionism as a racist, settler‑colonial ideology and declare the party as against it.