This article is taken from the June 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Find our subscription offers here.
Zack Polanski is a formidable left-wing icon.
He is a proud vegan, has a background in immersive theatre, and is an expert in hypnotherapeutic breast enlargement. What better champion for the working class?
Under Polanski’s leadership, the Green Party has gone from strength to strength. I see him very much as a Jesus Christ figure: inspiring, charismatic and, above all, the right sort of Jew.
This is why all these accusations of antisemitism are so galling. Whilst it is true that Raja Ateeq, a Green Party candidate in the recent local elections, referred to Jewish people as “cockroaches” on Facebook, this was wilfully misunderstood by the mainstream media. Cockroaches are resilient, resourceful and work well as a team. If anything, it’s a compliment.
Only by suspending antisemitic members on a daily basis can Polanski prove his party isn’t racist
Then there is the Greens’ deputy leader, Mothin Ali, who was accused of celebrating the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023. He posted on social media that the “indigenous people have the right to fight back” and demanded the end of “white supremacist European settler colonialism”. As usual, critics have been trying to twist his words to resemble what he actually said.
Ali later clarified to the BBC that he was not talking about Hamas at all. Yes, he posted it on the day of the attack, and yes, he happened to add in Arabic a reference to the “Al Aqsa Flood” (the name that Hamas gave to the operation), but only a rabid Islamophobe would see this as anything other than coincidental.
Frankly, it’s a good thing that so many Green candidates have been investigated for their anti-Jewish comments. It is only by suspending antisemitic members on a daily basis that Polanski can prove that his party isn’t institutionally racist.
There is no place for antisemitism in our society. There should be zero tolerance for those who deny the theory of the Holocaust. At the same time, we shouldn’t confuse legitimate criticism of the Israeli government with bigotry. So when Green candidate Sabine Mairey shared a post that said, “Ramming a synagogue isn’t antisemitism, it’s revenge,” we need to understand that she was simply trying to encourage nuanced political debate.
Reject division. Vote Green. Allahu Akbar.
