George Bernard Shaw saw it with surgical clarity. In The Man of Destiny (1898), his Napoleon observes:
"There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find an Englishman doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports his king on loyal principles and cuts off his king's head on republican principles."
Shakespeare had already named the moral type. In The Merchant of Venice (Act V, Scene I), Lorenzo warns:
"The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted."
Brighton, London and Whitehall have now supplied the footnotes—while Porto, Antwerp and America's oldest Jewish service organisation answer in the same key: Zionism is not racism; Britain's about-face is.
Brighton: green brainwashing, "Zionism is racism" revived
On 4–5 October 2026, members of the Green Party of England and Wales adopted, by 1,022 votes to 813, a motion that declares the party "anti-Zionist" and treats Zionism "as any other form of racism." An amendment meant to protect Jewish members who attend "Zionist" synagogues was rejected by 1,026 to 684. Four of the party's five MPs opposed the motion; the leader, Zack Polanski, did not vote.
The published text frames Zionism as an ethnonationalist project of exclusion or domination, commits the party to a single state in "historic Palestine," and legitimises "liberation by all means available consistent with international law." The words "armed struggle" and "from the river to the sea" surface in accompanying materials and in the author's preface—resurrecting, half a century later, the UN's discredited Resolution 3379 of 1975, repealed in 1991 by 111 votes to 25.
Call it what it is: green brainwashing—a party conference teaching members that Jewish national self-determination is racism, then wrapping the lesson in the language of anti-racism.
Israel's Foreign Ministry called the result "a stain on the history of the United Kingdom." The Board of Deputies of British Jews was blunt (X, 4 October 2026 (https://x.com/BoardofDeputies/status/2106827192369922143) X, 4 October 2026 https://x.com/BoardofDeputies/status/2106827192369922143):
"The motion passed by the Green Party today is an attack on the Jewish community. It is an antisemitic platform, based on a grossly offensive distortion and erasure of Jewish experience and identity."
And again: "Zionism is anti-racism, creating a refuge for Jews in their ancient homeland after millennia of persecution outside it."
Porto, Antwerp, America: three fronts, one refusal
Portugal. B'nai B'rith Portugal was among the first Jewish organisations to react. In a statement dated 4 October 2026, Porto, signed by President Gabriela Cantergi the lodge called on British political parties to reject the resolution without ambiguity and affirmed solidarity with Israel and with British Jews:
"We call on all British political parties to reject this resolution without ambiguity, and we stand with Israel."
Belgium. The next day, Antwerp’s JID (Jewish Information & Documentation Centre), signed by President Michel Kotek and Vice-President Ralph Pais, strongly condemned the vote and called on the Green Party to reverse it, warning that party-backed antizionism risks isolating Jews by denying their collective identity and Israel’s right to exist (stopantisemitisme.be (https://www.stopantisemitisme.be)stopantisemitisme.behttps://www.stopantisemitisme.be).
America. B'nai B'rith International — founded in New York in 1843, the world's oldest Jewish service organisation — has spent fifty years dismantling the same lie Brighton has just revived. Marking the anniversary of UN Resolution 3379, B'nai B'rith and its AJIRI partner have insisted that "Zionism is racism" was ground zero for anti-Israel extremism and antisemitism; that equating Jewish self-determination with racial supremacy inverts the meaning of racism itself; and that the smear's repeal in 1991 did not erase its echo. Brighton is that echo, shouted through a British conference hall. The American house of B'nai B'rith built the archive; the Portuguese lodge and the Belgian centre are answering in real time.
Silence, anywhere, is complicity.
The same weekend: the Royal College of Nursing drops Teva
That same weekend, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) ended its commercial partnership with Teva UK, the British subsidiary of the Israeli pharmaceutical group, after a campaign by Nurses for Palestine and allied petitioners. Teva will no longer sponsor the college's nursing leadership summit on migraine and headache services, scheduled for 30 October 2026 in London.
Activists hailed a "breakthrough" for BDS. Teva UK said it was disappointed, sought continued dialogue, and recalled that healthcare works best when it focuses on patients rather than politics. Teva UK ranks among the NHS's largest medicine suppliers; nothing so far indicates that clinical supply is affected. Teva, founded in Jerusalem in 1901, is one of the world's leading pharmaceutical and generics companies. To target Teva is not to boycott a bottle of olive oil. It is to politicise the pharmacy shelf—and to strike at patients.
A party conference one day. A royal nursing college the next. Perfidy has found a new calendar.
Citizenship for Haniyeh's bodyguard
Another face of the same duplicity: Britain granted asylum and then citizenship to a former bodyguard of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, before the man—identified only as "Mr X" for legal reasons—was accused of co-ordinating, from England, a plot for antisemitic attacks on Jewish community centres, Israeli diplomats and pro-Israel demonstrations in Europe, according to a Sunday Times investigation (also reported by Jewish News). Arrested in London in November 2025, he faces extradition to Germany.
Shelter the guard of a Hamas chief while, in the same Albion, a "Zionism is racism" motion and the boycott of an Israeli drugmaker flourish. Duplicity no longer improvises. It stacks.
Principle as camouflage
Shaw's Englishman is never "in the wrong," because every betrayal arrives wrapped as principle: anti-racism that singles out the Jewish state; professional ethics that punish an Israeli laboratory; hospitality that naturalises the bodyguard of a terror organisation's leader. Shakespeare's warning needs no gloss: the spirit fit for "treasons, stratagems and spoils" is not moved by concord—least of all by the moral concord that binds free peoples to Israel's right to exist.
From Porto to Antwerp to Washington, the Jewish world's answer is the same. British institutions should listen—before principle completes what prejudice began.
Sources
- Green Party of England and Wales, anti-Zionist policy, 4 October 2026
- Board of Deputies of British Jews on X, 4 October 2026, Board of Deputies of British Jews on X, 4 October 2026
- B'nai B'rith Portugal statement, Porto, 4 October 2026 (Gabriela Cantergi; David Nataf)
- JID vzw (Antwerp) Declaration, 5 October 2026 (Michel Kotek; Ralph Pais) — www.stopantisemitisme.be
- B'nai B'rith International / AJIRI on the enduring damage of UN "Zionism is racism" (Resolution 3379)
- IsraJ / The Guardian on the RCN–Teva UK break
- The Sunday Times on Haniyeh's bodyguard, The Sunday Times on Haniyeh's bodyguard
- Jewish News on the same case
- George Bernard Shaw, The Man of Destiny (1898)
- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Sce
