Greens adopt policy treating Zionism as racism (part 2)

[Twiglets1]

Follow on from previous thread

www.mumsnet.com/talk/politics/5585462-greens-adopt-policy-treating-zionism-as-racism?page=40&reply=155235707

Anyway. That’s all a bit off topic here. Except to the extent that it’s hard not to get swept up in the “omnicause” when you’re born into one part of it.

I think it's best if people in western counties dont take sides in the Israel-Palestine conflict. I think there's bad on both sides, and good on both sides, of course.

But I find the attitude of the left and their championing of this cause, above all others, really toxic. Particularly obnoxious is when people in the entertainment industry get involved in support for Palestine. It's a fashionable cause that costs them nothing but allows them to show they're on the 'right side'.

@dwordle Time has moved on since the second world war, the killing of tens of thousands of civilians and the destruction of infrastructure, hospitals is not acceptable and never has been.
Newsflash: the killings of large numbers of civilians was discussed at the time. One of the reasons the Brits in Singapore surrendered when they did was because of the suffering of the civilian population.

And the mass killing of civilians continues:
Yemen: 6 years, 150,000 civilians killed as a a direct result of combat, another several hundred thousand due to hunger, disease etc.
Syria: first ten years, UN estimate, over 300k direct civilian deaths; if you include combatants (and always bear in mind that the Gaza number includes combatants), somewhere over 650k.
Sudan: 3 years, now in 4th year of conflict, 150k-400k civilian dead, both direct and indirect.

So, no, time has not moved in the sense that civilian casualties no longer happen. It would be great if it had. But it hasn't. And it's hard to ignore the way in which the Gaza conflict has stolen almost all the headlines.

As for hospitals, they are strictly protected by the Geneva Convention UNLESS they are being used for military purposes eg firing at the enemy from the hospital, using it as an ammo dump or command base, using it as a barracks etc. Otherwise, how would you fight a ruthless opponent holed up in the locality's medical facilities who was launching missiles at you 24 hours a day?

The leader of the Cornwall Green Party has jumped ship following the political group’s controversial calls for a one-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Newquay mayor and Tenance Cornwall councillor Drew Creek has left the Green Party and joined the Labour and Co-operative Party, blaming the Zionism is Racism motion passed at Green Party Conference and the failure of leadership of Zack Polanski.

In other news, Cllr Christina Coleman has announced that she is leaving the Green Party and will join the Liberal Democrats. Cllr Coleman, a county and district councillor and former parliamentary candidate, said the decision follows concerns about the party’s direction under Zack Polanski’s leadership and the recent conference motion on Zionism.

www.voicenewspapers.co.uk/news/newquay-news-drew-creek-green-party-leader-political-group-controversial-call-zionism-motion-labour-968240

www.markpack.org.uk/177636/christina-coleman-joins-lib-dem-from-the-green-party/

Not to mention the killing of children vilians by their own government in places like Iran-30,000 young people in a week. Not a peep out of anyone, possibly because Iran also sponsors Hamas and various mosques/community groups/protests in Europe and especially the UK, as well as owning swathes of property across London.

Think we will here about more going over LD in the next few months

Can imagine at the moment most that are not happy with things are trying to work out if Green Party of old has any chance of grabbing back the reins.

As I understand it they have no chance of reversing this policy for 2 years now it is official Green party policy.

Yes I know but aside from the policy the more moderate Greens have either to take back control of the party or leave it.

Can imagine people are weighing up the likelihood of getting things back to real politics and issues at the moment. It is obvious if enough leave the party is doomed for good. Therefore this is a tough if you have been die hard Green for sometimes.

Yes I see what you mean. Tough indeed for the more moderate Greens to know what to do. Personally I would be too embarrassed to stay though.

How you can excuse the killings of civilians, it should never be normalised as an acceptable element of war.

Killing of civilians is never “acceptable” in a moral sense.

But being realistic, what wars can you name where civilians don’t get killed? Hamas knew that many civilians would get killed as a result of 7/10/23 - quite apart from the many civilians they killed on 7/10/23.

It’s one reason why it’s relatively rare to start wars, the damage to civilians always has the potential to be enormous.

Hamas targeted civilians, that was there aim. To create terror and commit murder. Can't be excused no matter what argument you choose.

Israel reacted and rightly so to seek justice and rescue those that were kidnapped and taken as a political pawns.

But they have gone too far and they have destroyed huge areas, killed thousands of civilians. 75,000 Palestinians have been killed since...many of which are children. That's nearly the population of Salford.

Combine this with land grabs, passing laws that legalise the death penalty for certain ethnic groups, targeting civilians getting water and provisions, bombing camps set up to protect civilians.

Regardless of the target you can't kill swaths of civilians to get to it...it's not just moral it's legal. If Israel are so confident that there war is legal submit himself before international court and let justice have it's day. But Netanyahu won't because he knows he's wrong. He knows that he can no longer visit large parts of Europe, he's trapped. So he loses his majority and and does a Trump and makes accusations of foul play. At the same time while using his own military to attempt to conduct another war against Iran.

I think most people in the west have had enough of these wars. The damage being done to our way of life, our standards of living and the effects on mass movements of displaced people.

@dwordle Yes. As someone in ‘the west’ I am indeed tired of these brutal terrorists behaving with impunity. Locking up gay people, destroying women’s rights and attacking my country over and over again. I agree this needs to stop.

AOC called The Strokes something like 'the best band in a generation.' Pics of celebrities at the concert wearing 'Fight Fascism' shirts.

After an interview where the lead singer denigrated 'Zionists' where he really meant Jews, and 'Jewish supremacy.'

Fight Fascism indeed.

The fascism fight doubles down on antisemitism. It's like the inverted holocaust.

The inversion of words and meanings is really maddening and frightening.

It's all very 1984, Ministry of Love, Democratic Republic of North Korea.

Definitely. Paradox was invented for these people.

Israel reacted and rightly so to seek justice and rescue those that were kidnapped and taken as a political pawns.

What does ‘seek justice’ really mean in this context? It’s a bit like when people talk about ‘proportionality’ - what would a proportional response actually look like against an enemy like Hamas?

After October 7th, Israel’s declared goals were to bring back the hostages and to eliminate Hamas. Achieving that (specially the latter) without civilian casualties is sadly near impossible when Hamas have deliberately embedded themselves into the civilian infrastructure, while simultaneously refusing civilians shelter in their tunnels.

You mention that 75,000 Gazans have been killed and that many were children, but how many of that total were active Hamas fighters?

If we're talking about how armies aren't supposed to attack hospitals we could also talk about how armies are meant to wear uniforms to distinguish them from civilians.

Hamas not wearing uniforms deliberately so that they are indistinguishable from civilians is another added level of complexity.

20,000 combatants but 25,000 out of the 75,000 were children. But consider that thousands more will now die because they lack access to basic human needs...like medicine and protection from the elements.

Consider that children have undergone amputations without anesthesia.... now put your self in the place of a parent seeing that

I have no doubt that it’s absolutely awful for those children and their parents.
That doesn’t change the fact that Hamas started this war by launching a horrific terror attack (which they also pledged to repeat), knowing that there would be retaliation and without providing shelter for their own civilians.

This is why I avoid CITME.
The bad faith arguments do my head in.
And the time and effort needed to rebut them is ultimately howling into the void.

What I said:
'So, no, time has not moved [on] in the sense that civilian casualties no longer happen. It would be great if it had. But it hasn't.'

What I am accused of doing:
Excusing the killing of civilians.

What I was doing, for the hard of thinking or deliberately obtuse, was outlining the realities of war. Which are horrible.

The point I have raised is that civilian deaths in Gaza have been lower (but still horrific) compared to both historic conflicts (when I was told that what happened in the past isn't acceptable now - when it wasn't regarded as irrelevant at the time) or current conflicts (when I was told I was excusing civilian deaths, which I obviously wasn't).

There is a choice.
When downright evil people launch an attack which kills innocent civilians in their beds and then embed themselves amongst their own civilians,
EITHER

1. It is acceptable to retaliate to eliminate as many of those bad people as is feasible, despite the fact that some of their civilians will be killed

OR

1. We must NOT attack them in case any of their civilians get killed.

If we go for 1, we might reduce the number of evil people in the world, or at least put them off doing what they did over and over and over again (because make no mistake, if Hamas could run pogroms every week, they would).
If we go for 2, the evil people will do their evil thing on repeat, and have their weekly or daily pogrom.

Unfortunately, 1 has many horrible side effects, including dead and maimed civilians, and traumatised survivors, some of whom will want to seek vengeance. But the horrible side effects of 2 are at least as bad, because the evil people will do their evil things on repeat for as long as they can get away with it.

Quick thought experiment, dwordle: If the Allies hadn't finally stood up to Herr Hitler in 1939, where do you think he would have stopped, and how many Jews, Slavs, Romani and others would have been killed in the process? If the Chinese (and later the Allies) hadn't stood up to Japan in the same era, how many more anthrax experiments etc do you think would have been run? How many more slave labourers would have been worked to death?

Many, many civilians were killed by the Allies in WWII, as well as by the Axis. But, overall, I suspect that the total of civilian deaths would have been far, far higher if Germany and Japan had just been allowed to get on with it.

I note that my point about how the sheer number of civilians killed in other conflicts was ignored, other than to accuse me of 'excusing' civilian deaths.

FWIW, I know what it is to grow up in a family haunted by the deaths in war of both combatants and civilians. Most, if not all, of those deaths were war crimes. So I do not, and never would, 'excuse' civilian deaths. Sometimes they're inevitable if you're fighting extremists of whatever stripe. And sometimes - like the deaths of all of my relations who died in WWII - they are completely unnecessary and mindlessly brutal.

It's why the cynical bastards did it they way they did it.

They wanted the optics of dead and suffering civilians to make the Israelis look like the bad guys, helped along by useful idiots like Owen Jones refusing to accept things like the mass rapes.

Well said. Spot on.

Thousands quitting Greens over pro-Palestine stance, senior MP warns

The Green Party has lost nearly 18,000 members since May amid accusations it has been taken over by anti-Zionist entryists.

Zack Polanski’s party has seen its membership fall from a peak of 231,000 to 213,000 after the party’s decision to define Zionism as a racist ideology.

An internal briefing document, seen by Sky News, warned the Greens had lost around £880,000 because of the exodus and would need to adjust its spending plans for next year as a result.

Adrian Ramsay, the former deputy leader of the party, is expected to say in an interview on Sunday that hard-Left activists have taken over the party, replacing its environmental values with anti-Israeli politics.

The MP for Waveney Valley is part of a growing group of moderates within the party who have applied pressure on Mr Polanski to reconsider the Zionism is racism policy.

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/10/30/thousands-quitting-greens-pro-palestine-former-leader-warns/