Councillor who said ‘settler colonialism must end’ on October 7 to stand for Green Deputy leader

A Leeds councillor who previously defended the right of “indigenous people to fight back” after October 7, is standing for the deputy leadership of the Green Party.

In a video announcing his leadership campaign, Mothin Ali was wearing a shirt featuring a Palestinian flag.

In it, he said that said that “The political climate in Britain at the moment is becoming really toxic” and lamented the rise of the “far right” and Reform UK, adding that he wanted the Greens to become a home for disillusioned voters and be an alternative to both Labour and the Conservatives.

The 43-year-old accountant and permaculture teacher also spoke about his passion for community gardens and said he had helped advise a rooftop garden in Gaza to grow food despite scarce resources.

Last year, Ali unseated Labour to win in Gipton and Harehills ward, a victory which he dedicated to “the people of Gaza”. He was filmed shouting “Allahu Akbar” while standing in front of the Palestinian flag shortly after the result was announced.

And, on October 7, 2023, Ali wrote on X: "White supremacist European settler colonialism must end!"

He also said that people should “support the right of indigenous people to fight back,” before adding: “They are not victims, they are occupiers, they are colonialists, they are European colonialists.

"It’s one of the last European colonies in the world, and that’s why the European people don’t want to let it go. They use the weapon of antisemitism so effectively that anyone who criticises Israel is labelled as antisemitic.”

Newly elected councillor Mothin Ali speaks after his election victory (Credit: X/Twitter)[Missing Credit]

Ali then claimed: “Every single person, every single people have a right to fight back, every single people have a right to live free of occupiers.”

He also lashed out at Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch, a Jewish university chaplain in Leeds who had been targeted by pro-Palestine activists after he had returned to Israel to serve as an IDF reservist.

Ali wrote: “This is Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch. This creep, that’s the only way I can describe him politely, is someone who went from Leeds to Israel to kill children and women and everyone else over there.”

He subsequently said he was “sorry for any upset my comments caused about the Gaza conflict.”

Ali continued: “I do not support violence on either side: violence leads to more violence and this is what I have tried to convey.”

In July last year, far-right activist Tommy Robinson falsely accused Ali of rioting, when he in fact had intervened to try and stop the violent disorder in Harehills.

Ali is standing for the deputy leadership against Antoinette Fernandez, who stood as the party’s candidate in Hackney North and Stoke Newington, and 21-year-old North Somerset councillor Thomas Dew.

The Green’s current deputy leader Zack Polanski, who is Jewish, is currently in the running for the party’s top job.

The London Assembly member, who joined the Greens from the Liberal Democrats in 2017, said he was standing on a platform of “eco-populism”. His main challengers are incumbent co-leader Adrian Ramsey MP and Ellie Chowns MP. Carla Denyer, Ramsay’s current co-leader announced last month that she would not be seeking re-election.

At the start of his leadership campaign, Polanski denied that the Labour Party was “rife with antisemitism” under Jeremy Corbyn.

In 2018, he posted on X that being “a pro-European Jew,” constituted “two reasons I couldn't vote for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn”.

Vociferous anti-Israel academic David Miller shared a screenshot of the post, saying: “Many people seem to have forgotten that Zack Polanski is a rabid Zionist who has repeatedly weaponised his Jewish identity to fight the Left.”

Miller then claimed that “a vote for the Greens is a vote for genocide”.

Polanski told far-left outlet Novara Media that although Corbyn hadn’t handled the issue “perfectly”, “it was not helpful for me to assume that the Labour Party was rife with antisemitism when we now know that blatantly was not true”.