Green Party leadership candidate Zack Polanski has denied that the Labour Party was “rife with antisemitism” under Jeremy Corbyn, despite previously being critical of the former Opposition Leader.
During an interview with Novara Media, Polanski, who announced his surprise leadership campaign over the weekend, suggested that his prior comments about the extent of antisemitism within Labour’s ranks were “not helpful”.
The London Assembly member, who is Jewish, said in a post on X in March 2018 that he was “a pro-European Jew,” which he said constitued “two reasons I couldn't vote for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn”.
Several of Polanski’s opponents have used the tweet to criticise him in recent years. For example, 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”.
Addressing the issue on Novara’s YouTube channel, Polanski said: “Jeremy Corbyn at the time was talking about pockets of antisemitism within the Labour Party.”
He went on to say 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”.
“But what did I have at the time to go as evidence as a Jewish person? I had the leader themselves saying I have antisemitism in my party”, Polanski added.
“I appreciate that's a complex and nuanced answer … there is an apology to Jeremy Corbyn in that too, in terms of yes he didn't handle it perfectly there are things I didn't handle perfectly including that but I think you can reflect on things and go from here let's move”, he continued.
Polanski also said that his experience of “attacks from often the Jewish Chronicle and other so-called mainstream Jewish organisations” meant that he had “a new appreciation for what Jeremy Corbyn was dealing with at that time”.
He added that he thought that “being pro-Palestinian should never be conflated with being antisemitic” but that “we know antisemitism exists and we also need to be strident with tackling that” along with Islamophobia, before claiming: “It does Jewish people like myself no favours when people conflate these things [being pro-Palestine with being antisemitic] in fact they make us less safe in our communities.”
In 2020, the Equality and Human Rights Commission found that “there were unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination for which the Labour Party is responsible”.
Jeremy Corbyn was blocked from standing for Labour at the 2024 general election for saying that saying the scale of antisemitism in the party had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons”.
He won his Islington North constituency as an independent candidate and emphasised his opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza throughout his campaign.
Polanski, who joined the Green from the Liberal Democrats in 2017, said he was standing on a platform of “eco-populism”.
“I don’t believe there are more people in this country who align with the politics of Reform than they do with the Green party”, he told The Guardian.
In an interview with the JC ahead of last year’s general election, he denied that his party had a vetting problem, despite our revelation of controversial statements by several Green candidates.
In the same interview, he stated that the Board of Deputies should be renamed the “Board of Deputies for the Israeli government”.
And, posting online in response to the JC’s coverage of his leadership bid, Polanski took issue with a passage detailing how he had “accused Israel of ‘committing genocide’ and ‘burning people alive’,” saying: “Needs more precision. I didn't accuse them, I'm talking about what is actually happening.”
