Revealed: the insiders who filibustered the ‘Zionism is Racism’ motion at the Green Party conference

First published by the Canary, 25 August 2026

In April this year, the much-heralded motion to the Green Party conference, which promised to turn it into the first mainstream political party openly committed to anti-Zionism, appeared in the conference order of business. But in the end, to the frustration of very probably an absolute majority of delegates, the motion was not put to conference.

Zionism is Racism

Instead, a series of bureaucratic manoeuvres, from attempts to rule the motion out of order to a protracted filibustering campaign, ensured that the Greens remain a Zionist party in terms of their official policy on Palestine – the two-state solution.

Although a vote on the motion had been expected early in proceedings following a successful push by its backers to fast-track the process, it was repeatedly delayed by several no-confidence motions against the party chair, each of which required a separate debate, the Telegraph reported.

A lengthy fight over the policy itself led to additional delays, after opponents of the measure tried unsuccessfully to rule it as out of order, by arguing that it contradicted the Green Party’s existing policy, which calls for a two-state solution.

But who were the people running this evident campaign to filibuster the motion out of the conference?

Step forward the Jewish Greens.

Jewish Greens

It was formed in 2018 as a “Liberation Group” inside the Green Party at the height of the Labour Party antisemitism witch-hunt. Among the highlights of the programme of speakers and events held by the Jewish Greens in 2024 were:

• New Israel Fund event: “An Evening with Mikhael Manekin in conversation with Alona Ferber”. The New Israel Fund is a Zionist funding organisation dedicated to supporting projects normalising Zionism and undermining resistance to it.

• Yachad event: “In conversation with Ami Ayalon” (with Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian). In 2008, Dutch prosecution authorities failed to arrest Ayalon, a former head of the Zionist intelligence agency Shin Bet, while he was visiting the Netherlands. An application for his arrest was reportedly “submitted to the Dutch authorities by Khalid al-Shami, who alleged that he was a victim of torture from1999-2000, when Ami Ayalon was the director of the Shin Bet.”

Both these events were advertised on the Jewish Greens ‘Events’ page. After this author posted about them on X in June 2024, accompanied by screengrabs (here and here), the two entries mysteriously disappeared from their website, while other events before and after in 2024 remained and are still available to view.

In February 2026 the Jewish Greens produced a long statement calling for a vote against the Zionism is Racism motion. It talked of how the motion might “alienate Jewish members and make it harder to combat racism,” though, obviously, the motion was specifically targeting the racism that is inherent to Zionism.

Who are they?

The key people in the Jewish Greens include the following current office bearers and two co-founders. It’s important to state that none of them have publicly dissented from the collective position paper of the group on the motion before conference, just cited.

Vivien Lichtenstein, co-founder of the Jewish Greens in 2018, Chair of the group 2018-2021 and then re-elected in 2023. She has publicly stated that the Green Party is a welcoming space for Zionists. She has claimed that:

if there’s any racism in our Jewish communities, then it is our responsibility to deal with that.

Naturally, however, she appears not to see the racism that takes the form of Zionism in the community. Approached by the Canary for comment, Lichtenstein said that “I describe myself as both Zionist and anti-Zionist depending on how Zionism is defined.” Pressed to explain that statement, Lichtenstein wrote a second response saying:

I’m unable to spend the time today providing an answer to your request for those definitions, leading me to describe myself as anti-Zionist or Zionist. There were some meetings when I would have described myself as both Zionist and anti-Zionist depending on how Zionism is defined, but not in any public statement to my recollection.

Opposing positions over anti-Zionism

Jo Bird was an officer of Jewish Greens from 2022 until July 2025, latterly she was Treasurer. She only joined the Greens in 2022 after being unjustly expelled from the Labour Party. She was a prominent Corbyn supporter and involved with JVL which in September 2025 formally defined itself as anti-Zionist, and changed its name to Jewish Voice for Liberation.

It is puzzling therefore that she reportedly opposed the motion, saying it:

should not be discussed so that mediation and further consideration could take place and a new unifying motion be put forward in the autumn.

In response to a request for comment from the Canary, Jo Bird said “I’m not a Zionist”.

Sam Alston is the Secretary of the group, re-elected in 2025. He has been a youth worker at Liberal Judaism, a staff member of Yachad, a representative on the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and co-founder of Na’amod, the former two of which are Zionist and the latter of which refuses to take a position on Zionism. His profile on the Jewish Greens webpage used to say (as recently as 28 March 2026) that he was a “council member for the Zionist Federation”, but this has now been removed.

‘Not racism’

Josh Alston, is Policy Officer of Jewish Greens, was previously Chair of the group and is the younger brother of Sam. He is the only key member profiled here who describes himself as a “committed anti-Zionist”. He defines this position as the belief that “Zionism is a form of settler nationalism” and that “the racism, genocide and apartheid characterizing Israel today have their core in Zionism as an ideology”.

This is preparation for his absurd position that:

While I would agree that Zionism is intrinsically racist, it is not a type of racism.

Thus he opposed the anti-Zionism motion. If we take his prevarications as given in good faith, it’s difficult to imagine a more confused position. He concludes that “as a Jewish person”, Zionists “are my friends and family and people that I love.” He would do well to heed the sentiments of the famous 1984 song by the Special AKA entitled “Racist friend”. Be it your cousin or your uncle or your lover…

Andrée Frieze was re-elected as a non-portfolio officer of the group. Frieze is married to a former member of the Zionist occupation forces. Though a convert to Judaism, she has taken naturally to Zionist talking points and tactics.

Other members involved against the anti-Zionism motion

As the Canary has previously reported Frieze was behind what appears to have been a bad faith complaint against Hamza Egal, chair of Global Majority Greens and convenor of the Greens’ racism policy working group. Egal later wrote an open letter denouncing what he said was racism in the Green Party, saying there was a pattern of:

repeated use of accusations of antisemitism — deployed not only against me but against many members of this party who oppose Zionism and its racist ideology and practice.

More recently, on her Substack Frieze denounced the Zionism is racism motion as “antisemitic”. One of the reasons for this, she says, is that “it will make it impossible for any Jewish member of the [Green Party] to express anything resembling support for Israel.”

As if that would be a bad thing!

Elise Benjamin is a co-founder of the Jewish Greens. Benjamin was a key actor in the illegitimate anti-Zionism filibuster operation. She is director of the national committee of UK Friends of Standing Together Greens. This is a Zionist normalisation organisation as has been pointed out by Lubna Speitan, the author of the ‘Zionism is Racism’ motion and even by the BDS movement.

On her X profile Benjamin claims to be an “indigenous Judean”. Given that she is an Ashkenazi Jew, this is an obvious falsehood. She nevertheless plays the victim in the mainstream press, telling the Guardian: “I’ve had experiences where someone has been telling me where my family are from.” Helpfully enough, Benjamin maintains an online family tree on ancestry.co.uk with her partner Craig Simmons – also a key Jewish Greens activist. This shows that their older relatives and ancestors, back eight generations, hailed originally from Poland in the mid Eighteenth Century and then variously from Latvia, Russia, Ukraine and Germany. As is well known, none of these places are in the Levant.

Zionist synagogues in the pipeline to defend Zionism

Some of the core Jewish Greens members are associated with the Kingston Liberal Synagogue. As the name would indicate it was a member of Liberal Judaism until 2025 when it joined with the Movement for Reform Judaism to form the Movement for Progressive Judaism.

All three organisations and all member synagogues are formally signed up to the Zionist movement. Andrée Frieze is a member and her husband Shimon Morad (the “Israeli” former member of the Occupation Forces) is a trustee of the charity that runs the synagogue.

The Alston brothers, Sam and Josh were brought up in this synagogue, and their mother Sara is also a trustee. The brothers are now also connected to liberal (Zionist) synagogues in Leeds and Oxford. Both brothers have been associated as leaders/workers with the Liberal Judaism youth movement LJY-Netzer, which says it aims to “promote a progressive Zionist vision of Israel”.

Weaponising “antisemitism” in the Green Party

Since the conference there has been a concerted effort by the Zionist press and their allies to ‘do a Corbyn’ on Zack Polanski. Polanski, though we might be critical of his positions, has at least been more combative than Corbyn was.

But it appears that something over 30 Green Party members have been (mostly) suspended or expelled for having violated Party rules on antisemitism.

The Daily Mail reported that:

the Greens are investigating more than 30 council candidates for alleged anti-Semitism.

In addition there have been expulsions of ordinary members who were not candidates. Among the comments made which resulted in them being suspended, expelled or dropped as candidates were statements about false flag operations, comparisons of “Israel” to the Nazis, “conspiracy theories” about 9/11, collaboration of Jews/Zionists with the Nazis. One candidate was denounced by the Jewish News for statements “rooted” in “antisemitic tropes” which they hilariously reported as being:

the conspiracy theory that Starmer and other Labour MPs have been ‘bought’ by Labour Friends of Israel, a mainstream cross-party lobbying group.

None of these statements exhibits even prejudice against “Jews as Jews”, far less racism. And of course the veteran anti-Zionism proponent Tony Greenstein was suspended on totally trumped-up charges, as the Canary has reported, which weaponised the lawfare carried out against him by genocidal Zionist groups. Later, in July, he was expelled.

Chaos in the Green Party

How is the Green Party getting it so wrong?

Where did the conduct rules being used to suspend or expel come from?

Well, it appears they were written and guided through party structures by the Jewish Greens, who published them over 17 pages on their own site. They also helpfully published a four-page summary guide effectively to expelling principled anti-Zionists.

At no point in the four pages does it say that anti-Zionism is not synonymous with “antisemitism” or that anti-Zionist views may be protected under the Equality Act, as established in my own case in 2024 and confirmed at appeal recently.

The guidelines were first produced in 2020 in presumed anticipation of just such a moment. The people who put them together, according to Zack Polanski himself, were Vivien Lichtenstein, Elise Benjamin and Josh & Sam Alston, the key figures in the Jewish Greens, of which Polanski was, at that time, the Treasurer.

He promoted the guidance in a piece on the Bright Green website in October 2020. The guidance is a cooked-up Zionist recipe for a witch-hunt, including as it does, both the IHRA working definition of antisemitism and the Jerusalem Declaration. The latter is of course a liberal Zionist panacea attempting to be slightly more reasonable than the IHRA, but still prohibiting totally legitimate criticism of Zionism as racism, as has been shown by Phil Bevin.

We’ve seen it all before around anti-Zionism

The Jewish Greens have also been offering antisemitism awareness training to the party. In a process reminiscent of the Jewish Labour Movement campaign of harassment and intimidation in the Corbyn-led Labour Party, they say they have so far trained a number of branches, as well as the Executive of the party and its youth section. It is no wonder, therefore, that these apparently mysterious expulsions are happening.

The Canary approached the following members of the Jewish Greens for comment via email, or by Facebook Messenger or by message on X: Vivien Lichtenstein, Jo Bird, Sam Alston, Josh Alston, Andrée Frieze and Elise Benjamin. Replies were received from Vivien Lichtenstein and Jo Bird, which are reflected in the article above.