By GB News (Politics) | Created at 2026-10-09 18:01:42 | Updated at 2026-10-16 09:38:08
6 days ago
A close friend of Zack Polanski has called on the Green leader to resign after he refused to say whether Israel has the right to exist.
Mr Polanski, who lost to Labour in Holborn & St Pancras, is facing growing calls to step down after a humiliating defeat in his first by-election outing since 2019.
Joshua Alston, a former chairman of the Jewish Greens, is now putting pressure on Mr Polanski to stand down.
Writing for The Huffington Post, Mr Alston said: "Zack Polanski is my friend, but he is also a coward – and political leadership requires courage. He must resign."
Mr Alston's call for Mr Polanski's resignation came after the Green Party passed its controversial "Zionism is racism motion" in Brighton last weekend.
He added: "Many people, including myself, warned that, if applied badly, this motion risked setting up a purity test that Jewish members would not be able to pass."
However, the Green leader failed to buckle to calls to lower the tone on Israel following his defeat to Labour's Sagal Abdi-Wali.
During an interview with the BBC, Mr Polanski failed on five occasions to say whether he believed Israel had the right to exist.
"I believe everyone deserves a safe home," Mr Polanski insisted.
He added: “I don’t believe any state has the right to oppress or to commit apartheid, and certainly not genocide on another people.
“Now, it may be in the future that there is a solution in which case Israelis and Palestinians can have equal rights.”
Ex-Green Party deputy leader Shahrar Ali claimed Mr Polanski is either "fearful of saying what he truly thinks" or is "fearful of the pro-Palestinian mob" after he made the comments.
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Speaking to GB News, Mr Ali said: "I was actually stunned and shocked, even though it's something that I predicted would happen at the true scale of what had gone on.
"For Polanski to deny earlier today, hot on the heels of a very poor by-election result, to refuse to state that Israel has a right to exist, that's sinister.
"That's just confirmed that either the leader of the Green Party is fearful of saying what he truly thinks, or he's fearful of the pro-Palestinian mob within the party who appear to have control of everything now."
He added: "Bear in mind that all the past leaders of the party and most of the MPs finally came out at the 11th hour last weekend to say, 'Do not vote for this motion'.
"So they are all undermined because they lost against and were fond of calling them the grassroots of the party. But they were the activists, and they've said loud and clear that they want and wanted this motion."
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