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Source: https://www.thefp.com/p/tony-blair-britains-fastest-growing-party-anti-jewish
Britain's Fastest-Growing Party Has an Anti-Jewish Problem
(Free Press) Tony Blair - The Green Party of England and Wales crossed a dangerous line, one that it is unacceptable to cross. It passed a resolution which effectively denounced the State of Israel's right to exist. The party passed a motion entitled "Zionism Is Racism," which commits the party to a single Palestinian state covering all of historic Palestine - which is to say, to a world in which Israel, the state which contains the largest population of Jews on Earth, does not exist. Since at least 2/3 of British Jews call themselves Zionists, the party has, in effect, branded the majority of the country's Jews racists. Today, the Green Party is a significant force in British politics. It has moved itself, and many of its supporters and sympathizers, from condemnation of Israel's conduct in the Gaza war to a full-on denial of the State of Israel's right to exist. Zionism was never a movement started in support of Jewish supremacy. It started because Jewish people found that the original preferred strategy of assimilation was impossible. Throughout the centuries, Jews in Europe and elsewhere were subject to persecution. Sometimes treated less badly than at other times, but never treated equally. So in the late 19th century, the movement began for a Jewish homeland. The terrors of the Holocaust gave it unstoppable force. But it was never, and has never been, incompatible with self-determination for the Palestinians. Those of us working, through the Board of Peace, to ensure that the bloodshed of Oct. 7 is never repeated, and that Gaza has a different and better future, understand very well the legitimate global concern about Gaza. We have a plan - the only viable plan on offer - whose framework is designed to create a new Gaza in which Israel's security is protected and the Palestinians in Gaza have the chance of a different and better future. We know that only by freeing Gaza from the control of Hamas, so long as it remains committed to the destruction of Israel by violence, can the Palestinians of Gaza have a chance at freedom. When misguided or malevolently guided activists in Western countries campaign for Zionism to be delegitimized, they harm the Palestinian cause. Palestinians know Israel will continue to exist. They know that if there were a one-state solution how unlikely it would be that such a state would be Palestinian. This vote - overt anti-Jewish discrimination from what is now a mainstream British party - is a warning sign. It reveals something rotten. It is the duty of all of us to put it right. The writer served as prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and is executive chairman of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.