The UK’s Green Party has voted in its first Jewish leader, the vocally anti-Israel and pro-Palestine northerner Zack Polanski.
Polanski, 42, who won with 20,411 votes from party members, has referred to himself as “proud to be Jewish” but “certainly not a Zionist.” Further, he views being called a Zionist as a criticism, tweeting on January 29, 2024 that it was “s*****” for someone to “see someone Jewish and prefer to tweet Zionist at them.”
He told The Guardian in May that he grew up “very Zionist,” but his stance today very much opposes that of his childhood. In almost every interview, Polanski speaks of the “genocide in Gaza” or “Israel’s genocide,” including during an interview with Good Morning Britain on Wednesday.
He is an outspoken supporter of the Palestinian cause and a frequent participant at pro-Palestine events. Polanski was a guest speaker at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign rally in January 2025 and at a BDS conference in July 2025.
He also stood out in support of Palestine Action when it was proscribed as a terror group in July 2025, writing on social media “They can ban groups, but it won’t stop us demanding an end to the genocide. Whether Palestine Action is for the next hour or after... Support action for Palestine to stop arms sales to Israel to stop the killing of innocent people. They can never ban our collective humanity.”
“Israel kills a child every 45 minutes,” he tweeted on June 29. “We are all Palestine Action.”
When asked in a recent interview about his relationship with Jeremy Corbyn, Polanski said he was “absolutely aligned” with the former Labour leader’s stance on Palestine. He was also vehemently against Israel’s attacks on Iran in June 2025, writing on X/Twitter on June 16, “Israel’s attack on Iran is illegal,” and on June 22, “Iran was negotiating – when Israel launched a war on them. The US joined in – and now our prime minister basically says ‘well they were asking for it.’”
Polanski is also vocally against British arms exports to Israel, repeatedly calling for this to be halted.
Use of Judaism to legitimize claims
He repeatedly draws on his Jewish identity to grant legitimacy to his claims about Israel and tries to speak for the Jewish community as a whole when expressing his views. For example, on December 31, 2024, he condemned the Board of Deputies for British Jews for a statement in support of Israel. “Being Israeli and being a British Jew are two separate things,” he wrote. “[It’s] antisemitic to conflate them. If they were representing Judaism, they would speak out against genocide.” He has, in fact, in the past called the Board the “Board of Deputies for the Israeli government.”
Again on November 26, 2024, he tweeted, “You do not protect Jewish people by the constant conflation with Israel and antisemitism.”
In April 2024, Polanski attended an anti-Zionist Passover seder with the anti-Zionist Jewish group Naamod UK. The Haggadah read: “We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people not in spite of our Judaism but because of it.” Naamod calls itself “a movement of Jews in the UK seeking to end our community’s support for Israel’s occupation and apartheid” with allegedly 600 members.
Polanski first entered politics in the Liberal Democrats in 2016, before exiting for the Greens in 2017. He was elected deputy leader of the Greens in 2022 and launched his leadership bid in May 2025. Outside of Israel-related campaigning, Polanski is in support of a wealth tax and is against NATO. He describes himself as an ‘eco-populist’ and vows to overtake Labour.
Polanski told Novara Media in June that he has never been to Israel.