The Green Party has opened its doors to a notorious anti-Zionist who once described the Israeli state as “Hitler’s bastard offspring”.
Tony Greenstein, who also accused Israel of being “as obsessed with Jewish racial purity as Nazi Germany”, has been welcomed into the party nearly a decade after being expelled by Labour.
Critics accused the Greens of “providing a home for all the people who poisoned the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn” and urged Zack Polanski, the party’s leader, to cut ties with Mr Greenstein immediately.
It came after the Greens were forced to delay a vote on whether to define Zionism as a “racist ideology” when a debate at the party’s spring conference descended into chaos. The highly contested “Zionism is racism” motion – which could still pass at a future Green Party conference – also called for the abolition of the state of Israel.
Mr Greenstein, who is the son of a rabbi and grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family, describes himself as an “anti-Zionist” and “anti-racist”. He is a prominent critic of Israel, branding it an “illegitimate state” that is moving “further to the neo-Nazi Right” in a recent post to his blog.
He was expelled from Labour in 2018 after being found to have breached the party’s rules on “prejudicial” or otherwise “grossly detrimental” conduct. He has referred to his critics as “Zio idiots” and “Zionist scum” and claimed “Zionists collaborated with the Nazis”.
Mr Greenstein confirmed to The Telegraph that he had joined the Green Party after a brief stint in Your Party, Mr Corbyn’s new hard-Left outfit.
He said: “After Corbyn decided to destroy Your Party, I resigned from it and joined the Green Party. I think it is important for Jewish people to make it clear that opposition to Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism.
“Zionism is the ideology of the Israeli state and it is an ideology of ethnic cleansing that has now turned genocidal. Israel has never been interested in becoming a normal, stable country.
“It is the only state in the world that refuses to define its borders because the myth of the Biblical Land of Israel stretches into Lebanon and Syria and all the way to the Euphrates in Iraq and down to the Nile. So it’s got a long way to go.”
Greens ‘should kick him out immediately’
The Greens did not deny that Mr Greenstein had joined the party when approached by The Telegraph.
A spokesman for the party told the Jewish Chronicle it was “open to anyone who shares our values and wants to be part of our movement working for social and environmental justice”, while refusing to comment on individual members.
Former senior Labour figures who quit the party under Mr Corbyn’s leadership expressed dismay at Mr Greenstein’s move to the Greens and urged Mr Polanski to disown him.
Lord Austin, who abandoned Labour over an alleged “culture of extremism” in 2019, said: “Is there no one Zack Polanski would not allow to join the Green Party?
“It seems to be providing a home for all the people who poisoned the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. The Green Party should kick him out immediately.”
Lord Walney, who quit Labour in 2018 and went on to serve as the Government’s political violence tsar, said: “This confirms that the Green Party is now the natural home for the far-left extremists who used to bring shame to Labour in the days of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
“There seems to be no one in the Greens prepared to fight back against the party’s diversion from its original focus on the environment and climate change.”
Mr Greenstein has been a prominent left-wing activist for decades, dating back to his time as a student squatter in Brighton in the 1970s.
He has said his “doubts about Zionism” started when he was a child, and he became convinced of the case against the movement at school. He went on to co-found the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the early 1980s and led calls for a boycott of Israeli goods in the 2000s.
In 2016, Mr Greenstein’s Labour membership came under scrutiny when it emerged he had been allowed to join the party despite referring to his critics as “Zio idiots” and “Zionist scum”.
Expelled by Labour for use of term ‘Zio’
He was suspended and later expelled for a breach of Labour’s rules, reportedly concerning his use of the term “Zio” and an article he wrote describing Dame Louise Ellman, a Jewish former MP, as a “supporter of Israeli child abuse”.
At the time of his initial suspension, Mr Greenstein insisted he was the victim of a “false anti-Semitism witch-hunt”. The controversial campaigner went on to describe the Jewish state as “Hitler’s bastard offspring” at a pro-Palestinian event in London in 2021.
In comments reported by the Jewish Chronicle, he said: “Nazi Germany in a sense built the state of Israel at a crucial time and you can actually say that the state of Israel today is Hitler’s bastard offspring because the ideology, the ideology that permeates Israel, Jewish racial supremacy, originated in the fascist states of Europe.”
In a more recent speech, he said: “In 2019 at the Palestine Expo conference in London, I came out and said that Israel was Hitler’s bastard offspring. The Jewish Chronicle picked up on this and it was ‘notorious anti Zionist says it yet again’.
“But the reality is that Israel is as obsessed with racial purity – Jewish racial purity – as Nazi Germany was. And I’ll say something else, that whereas Hitler and the Nazis never managed to persuade the majority of German people about anti-Semitism, the level of racism in Israel is actually far, far higher than it was in Nazi Germany.”
In 2024, Mr Greenstein was charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 for allegedly inviting support for Hamas. A police spokesman said the case concerned comments made online on Oct 7 2023, the day of the Hamas terror attacks on Israel.
The trial was originally scheduled for January 2026 but has been postponed to August. The alleged offence carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.