Amid what police chief has called 'epidemic' of antisemitism

UK Jews’ worry as Green Party rise sees election of candidates accused of antisemitism

Jewish residents of Hackney in east London voice concern as Greens win mayoralty and council control; several Green party candidates accused of antisemism win election elsewhere, as does a Holocaust-denier from the soaring hard-right Reform party

Some British Jews voiced anxiety as parties on opposite ends of the political spectrum made major gains in local elections across the United Kingdom in results announced Friday and Saturday, bringing into office several candidates who have espoused antisemitic hate speech and anti-Israel conspiracy theories.

A particular focus of concern was East London’s Borough of Hackney, where the far-left, anti-Israel Greens won both the mayoralty and control of the council. Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews live in Hackney’s Stamford Hill area — the largest concentration of Haredi Jews in Europe.

Both anti-immigrant Reform UK and the Greens surged in Thursday’s election, largely at the expense of the governing Labour Party and the main opposition Conservative Party, at a time when Jews in the UK are under increasing threat.

The Green Party’s Jewish leader, Zack Polanski, focused a substantial part of his campaign on opposition to Israel and liked a post suggesting Prime Minister Keir Starmer is on a Zionist payroll.

“Palestine is one of the elements on the ballot,” Polanski told the BBC on election day. Pressed on whether he believes Israel has a right to exist, he replied: “I don’t believe any country has a right to exist. People have a right to exist.”

He also claimed that discussing whether Israel has a right to exist “actually just ends up in gatekeeping, which is partly how we ended up in this mess in the first place of the Balfour Declaration,” referring to the 1917 British government declaration in support of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Polanski’s party has been embroiled in a string of antisemitic scandals, with many Green candidates posting antisemitic and anti-Israel screeds on social media. Heading into the election, the Greens were reportedly investigating 30 of their own candidates for antisemitism.

British Jews have faced a wave of terrorist and antisemitic attacks nationally, including the stabbing of two Jewish men in the London neighborhood of Golders Green last week and a string of arson attacks on synagogues and other Jewish sites. In October, an attacker drove his car into people gathered outside a Manchester synagogue and fatally stabbed one man.

Polanski criticized the police for their use of force in detaining Essa Suleiman, the suspect charged with the Golders Green terror attack. His comments prompted a swift rebuke from London police chief Mark Rowley.

The populist Reform UK party of Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage garnered 1,442 council seats and control of 14 councils, the BBC reported. The Green Party gained 374 seats and control of 4 councils, and also won 2 mayoral elections.

Labour and Conservatives lost 1,406 and 557 seats, respectively.

Hackney results

In the mayoral race for the northern London borough of Hackney, which has some 30,000 ultra-Orthodox Jewish residents, Green Party candidate Zoe Garbett won the seat after 24 years of Labour running the council, the Jewish Chronicle reported.

Thanking her voters during her victory speech, Garbett said they were “sick of politicians… supporting genocide,” a reference to widespread accusations that Israel has committed genocide in the war against Hamas in Gaza sparked by the terror group’s invasion and massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023.

During her time as a city councillor, Garbett supported a motion calling to cut ties with Israel, saying, “I want to be really clear what we are talking about… a genocide, apartheid, a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people.” A motion to change party policy to equate Zionism with racism did not pass at the Greens’ spring conference in March. Israel has repeatedly and vociferously denied allegations of genocide in Gaza.

Several Green Party councillor candidates who have posted extremist social media posts were also elected in Hackney.

One of those elected, Ifhat Shaheen, described Hamas atrocities on October 7, 2023, as Palestinians trying to “defend themselves.”

Zehava, a Jewish resident of Hackney, told the Jewish Chronicle: “I worry a lot about what happens next. Most people around me sadly have their heads in the sand. I do feel we are in for a rough few years now.”

She noted that Hackney’s incoming mayor “Garbett has said she’s not happy with the way the police have dealt with the right to protest about ‘genocide in Gaza’,” and said she feared inflamed antisemitism. “I am very concerned. Their idea of Zionism equalling racism is going to make hate crimes much worse in my opinion,” she said of the Greens. “The whole Gaza manifesto to me means that there will be a lot more protests in the area.”

An ultra-Orthodox Hackney resident told the Chronicle of concerns that local politics are being dominated by “divisive debates about the Middle East,” that bring international conflicts into the community.

Green Party candidate Mohammed Suleman, who was suspended from the party in the run-up to the election, was nevertheless elected in Newcastle. Suleman was sanctioned after he reposted claims that “Israel kills babies as a hobby” and a TikTok video claiming Jewish prisoners of war during World War Two were willing to bury Soviet prisoners alive under Nazi orders.

In the council race for the northern London suburb of Barnet, Charli Thompson won the Greens’ only seat, while the Conservatives and Labour won 31 seats each.

According to Jewish News, Charli Thompson called the outlet “vile” after it asked her to clarify her social media posts regarding antisemitism.

Two other Green candidates, Sabine Mairey and Saiqa Ali, running for seats in the Lambeth borough of London, were arrested by the Metropolitan police last month “on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred online,” an offense under the UK’s Public Order Act, for online posts.

Mairey had posted, “Ramming a synagogue isn’t antisemitism, it’s revenge,” and Saiqa Ali shared an image of an armed man wearing a Hamas headband with the slogan, “Resistance is freedom.”

Ali was elected to the council. Mairey’s seat was the subject of a recount at time of writing.

Reform Holocaust denier

Concerns were also raised regarding some of the candidates elected from the Reform party, who have been accused of antisemitism and racism.

In Merseyside, northwest England, Reform UK candidate Jay Leslie Cooper, a Holocaust denier and conspiracy theorist, won a seat in the Bootle West ward of Sefton council, Jewish News reported.

Cooper is reported to have said on Facebook last year that “the Hallocaust [sic] is a hoax. There wasn’t [sic] even 6 million Jews in Europe at the time. Propaganda.”

In Essex, east England. Reform UK candidate Stuart Prior won a seat on Rochford council. Last month, Rochford was accused of praising the rape of Sikh women, calling Muslims “rats” and posting about “the master race,” on social media.

Farage, 61, and his populist party have long been accused of flirting with racism, something which he and the party have denied. Former classmates have alleged that Farage made a Nazi salute, joked about gas chambers and said, “Hitler was right,” among other expressions of support for Nazism. He has denied this.

The head of London’s Metropolitan Police said Sunday that British Jews are facing their greatest-ever threat, which he called an “epidemic” of antisemitism.

In recent months, in addition to the stabbing, two synagogues and one former synagogue have been targeted by arson, and four ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity were burned, amid other incidents.