The Jewish leader of the United Kingdom’s Green Party has called on the government to sever trade and diplomatic ties with Israel in response to Israeli strikes on Lebanon.
Zack Polanski made the comments during the first minutes of a speech on Thursday that launched the Green Party’s local election campaign in London. Polanski, who has led his left-populist party to major wins since taking over in September, hopes the Greens will benefit from protest votes against the Labour government in local elections on May 7.
“It is outrageous that Israel are still enjoying diplomatic and trade privileges from the international community, and as a Green Party, we are calling on this government to make much more robust sanctions, to withdraw the UK-Israel trade agreement, and to end the genocide,” said Polanski.
Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon killed over 250 people on Wednesday, marking the deadliest day of the war between Israel and Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, and threatening the fragile ceasefire between the United States and Iran. The Israeli army is fighting across southern Lebanon, and government officials have signaled that it plans to occupy the area.
Polanski also said the United Kingdom should block the U.S. military from using U.K. airspace to ensure the U.K. has no involvement in strikes on Iran.
“We still have U.K. soil and U.K. bases where U.S. bombers are flying over to Iran,” he said. “What we need to do is disentangle the U.K. military and the U.S. military, ban the U.S. from using our airspaces.”
In a statement on Thursday, Polanski added that the British government “must suspend diplomatic ties and stop all arms sales to this increasingly rogue state.” He accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer of being “too cowardly and complicit to condemn Israeli atrocities.”
Polanski has said that he grew up in a “Zionist household” and attended King David, a Jewish school in Manchester. He said in an interview with the BBC that his views on Israel began to shift after he encountered Breaking the Silence, a group of Israeli veterans who say they are morally obligated to recount their experiences of military control over Palestinians. Polanski also said that the war in Gaza solidified his staunch criticism of Israel.
Polanski is a member of Na’amod, an organization of British Jews who say they seek “to end our community’s support for Israel’s occupation and apartheid, and to mobilise it in the struggle for freedom, equality and justice for all Palestinians and Israelis.”
Earlier this year, Polanski gave qualified support to a Green Party motion called “Zionism is racism,” saying he would back the resolution if its definition of “Zionism” was linked to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and its actions in Gaza.
The Jewish Greens, a subgroup within the party, urged their colleagues to vote against the motion. “This is not your run-of-the-mill motion opposing Israel’s actions (something that Jewish Greens would have no problem with), but something much more problematic that is likely to make Jews feel unwelcome in the Green Party,” the group said.
The British outlet Jewish News reported that some of Polanski’s family members, including his mother, have expressed support for Israel on social media.
The “Zionism is racism” motion failed to pass in March after internal disputes, though it remains on the table for a later vote.
Polanski frequently speaks about his pride in being Jewish and says that pride led to his support for Palestinians. In a TikTok video last year, he said that being Jewish to him meant “standing against injustice” and “remembering our history.”
“When I speak out for Palestinians, I don’t do it in spite of my Judaism,” said Polanski. “I do it because of it. Because ‘never again’ for one group of people must actually mean ‘never again’ for anyone.”
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