There has been a virulent backlash in the British media against the Green Party of England and Wales since delegates at the party conference voted for a motion that brands Zionism as a racist ideology and supports the formation of a single democratic state in Palestine. As we have come to expect when British pundits and politicians are discussing Israel, nobody has seen fit to ask any Palestinians what they think about Zionism and what it has meant for them in practice.

While Palestinians who live in Britain are studiously ignored, the media extends its search for critical voices to the rest of Europe. The Guardian reported on a statement from the European Green Party (EGP) that criticized the motion — “we unequivocally distance ourselves from it” — and suggested that the English and Welsh Greens were now “facing international ostracism.”

The speed and severity of the response from the EGP contrasts sharply with its deafening silence about the shameful track record of the German Greens, the flagship of the European Green movement ever since the 1980s. The EGP never spoke out against the German party, even though its leaders campaigned against a ceasefire in Gaza, supplied weapons to Israel’s war machine, and branded Palestinian schools and hospitals as legitimate targets.

The Green politician Annalena Baerbock was Germany’s foreign minister when Israel began its onslaught against the people of Gaza in October 2023, and she remained in that post until May 2025. Her party had already demonstrated its hostility to Palestinian rights in 2019 when it voted to support a Bundestag motion that compared the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement to Nazism.

...

In January 2024, Baerbock immediately joined the Israeli campaign against the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), cutting off funding for the organization that supplied vital humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. This move came just as Israel went on trial at the International Court of Justice, accused of violating the Genocide Convention. She later admitted that Israel had supplied no evidence to back up its allegations that UNRWA collaborated with Hamas.

Over the course of the year, Baerbock modified her rhetoric in a way that mirrored the discursive games of the Biden administration, calling for a “humanitarian ceasefire” while her government continued to funnel arms to Israel. Israeli leaders had no reason to fear any consequences when they brushed aside such calls.