Greens must take immediate action against antisemitism in party, says Lucas | Green party

Former Greens leader Caroline Lucas has called on the party to take immediate action against candidates who make anti-Semitic comments or posts, following a series of lawsuits ahead of Thursday’s election.

Lucas, who led or co-chaired the party for six years and was its first MP, said that although the number of such cases was limited, they could not be ignored.

“The statements surfaced by a handful of @TheGreenParty candidates are completely unacceptable and require immediate action,” he said. wrote to x. “There is no place for antisemitism or hate speech in the party. This is a society-wide problem and needs to be eradicated wherever it is found.”

Zack Polanski, now leader of the Greens in England and Wales, has rejected leading candidates for anti-Semitic comments. But Labor accused the party of moving too slowly to suspend or remove them.

The issue came to the fore last week after two Green candidates for Lambeth council in south London, Sabine Mairey and Saiqa Ali, were arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred online.

Screenshots from Ali’s Instagram account show him posting a photo of an armed man wearing a headband belonging to the banned Islamist group Hamas, with the slogan “Resistance is freedom.”

Another screenshot showed Mairey sharing a post with the following text: “Attacking a synagogue is not antisemitism, it’s revenge.” Both were suspended by the party.

Among other cases, the Greens are investigating Brian Capaloff, a candidate in Waltham Forest, north-east London, for allegations he posted on X using an anonymous account to speculate whether the stabbing of two Jewish men in north-west London last week was deliberately staged by Zionists.

Walsall candidate Joe Belcher is also under investigation. While he was running for the West Midlands parliamentary seat in the 2024 election, he was suspended by the Greens after posts emerged suggesting Hamas may have been paid by Israel to carry out the October 7, 2023 attacks.

Under the Greens’ highly decentralized system, local parties have significant power, including who they choose as candidates. The party argues this could make the removal of candidates slower than other parties.

Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, Polanski condemned any anti-Semitic comments and said it was “not an abstract idea” for him. “As a Jew, these comments disgust me. It is important that we do not allow the disciplinary process to take its place, and that is exactly what we have,” he said.

He rejected the idea that this was particularly prevalent among the Greens: “I don’t believe we have any particular problem in comparison. [with] wider society and other political parties.

Polanski said he rejected candidates who made such comments. “When asked if he would tell people here today: don’t vote for them, they are not on your side,” he replied: “That’s true.”

A Greens spokesman said: “Caroline Lucas is right; there is no place for antisemitism or hate speech in any party. “She accepts that unacceptable comments have been made by only a small fraction of the Greens’ more than 4,500 candidates in these local elections.

“Where examples that do not align with the Green party’s values ​​are brought to our attention, we review them and in some cases candidates have already been suspended. We are investing to strengthen our vetting procedures to prevent unsuitable candidates from falling through the cracks.”