https://nitter.click/CarolineLucas/status/2106761947236769843

Conference: Zionism is Racism speech

I speak as someone long been committed to the Palestinian cause. I've visited the West Bank 3 times, and Gaza once. I served for many years as a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. I view the Israeli government as racist, I believe its actions in Gaza amount to genocide and I support the BDS campaign. And yet I remain firmly opposed to this motion. Zionism means different things to different people, whether we like it or not. It has always been so.
We need to recognise and understand the complexity of how people understand it. Is the Israeli government racist? Yes Is Zionism racist? It is both racist AND a response to racism. It's double-sided. The political Zionist movement emerged as a direct response to persecution within Europe. So for European Jews, it wasn't always ideology that propelled them to Israel - often they were simply fleeing for their lives after centuries of persecution, culminating in the horror of the holocaust.
Of course that doesn't justify the appalling treatment of the Palestinians. Nothing possibly could.
But it explains why, for many European Jews, Zionism was historically a response to racism. It also explains why, for Palestinians, losing their land and sometimes their lives, Zionism was and remains a violent settler-colonial entity, exclusionary and yes racist, resulting in their expulsion, and ongoing statelessness. These things can both be true.
Conference, I urge you not to support the over-simplification at the heart of this motion - a refusal to accept complexities which is leading to so many Jewish members feeling scared and unwelcome in our party. You've heard how this motion will actually undermine our efforts in support of the Palestinian cause Let's instead focus on the vast areas where we do agree and where we can be effective -Showing our solidarity by challenging even more loudly the genocide by the Israeli government.
Not by alienating the very many Jewish people who share our horror, and who are our partners in this endeavour.

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Trying to have it both ways as usual. Maybe it was partly a response to racism, but it was also an avowedly colonialist movement, and it accepted the racist premises of the European powers, and late collaborated with them to expel Jews based on the shared view that they didn't belong where they lived. So, a racist response to racism, then. Is that really what you're trying to speak out in defense of? Pfff...

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