Israeli authorities have demolished properties belonging to a Palestinian citizen of Israel, who rescued 30 Israelis from the Nova music festival during the 7
I've had a lot of correspondence about the party conference "Zionism is Racism" motion, much of it from Jewish constituents and party members who are worried about what it signals. I've listened carefully, and I want to set out where I'm at.
First, anti-Jewish racism is real, rising, and incompatible with everything the Green Party stands for. Criticism of Israel's documented conduct must never become hostility towards Jews as people. I hold both commitments without hesitation, and if I ever fall short of that, I expect to be told.
The case for the motion is about conduct, not definitions. The UN Commission of Inquiry found in September 2025 that Israeli authorities have committed and continue to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. This is on top of earlier findings of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Settlement expansion in the occupied territories has continued through every peace process since Madrid under frameworks that have never constrained the strongest party. Those are documented findings, not rhetoric.
And before anyone claims the Green
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I've had a lot of correspondence about the party conference "Zionism is Racism" motion, much of it from Jewish constituents and party members who are worried about what it signals. I've listened carefully, and I want to set out where I'm at.
First, anti-Jewish racism is real, rising, and incompatible with everything the Green Party stands for. Criticism of Israel's documented conduct must never become hostility towards Jews as people. I hold both commitments without hesitation, and if I ever fall short of that, I expect to be told.
The case for the motion is about conduct, not definitions. The UN Commission of Inquiry found in September 2025 that Israeli authorities have committed and continue to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. This is on top of earlier findings of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Settlement expansion in the occupied territories has continued through every peace process since Madrid under frameworks that have never constrained the strongest party. Those are documented findings, not rhetoric.
And before anyone claims the Greens have become extreme: the formal position that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination was UN General Assembly policy from 1975 until 1991, when Israel demanded its removal as a condition of attending the Madrid conference. The United States used its weight to push through the revocation.
What followed is well documented. Peace negotiation after peace negotiation collapsed, yet settlement expansion continued. A pattern that repeats, time after time.
Now the ground is shifting anyway. The most recent Pew survey shows majorities on both sides, 56% in Israel and 68% in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, see no way for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist.
In the United States, half of non-Orthodox Jews under 35 back a bi-national state, according to polling by the Jewish Voter Resource Center.
The two-state consensus is dissolving from both ends.
The motion was democratically arrived at, and I took it seriously enough to feed my input in earlier this year. As a Green Party ward councillor, I consider it my job to represent policy our members have decided.
On the doorstep, I don't get many questions about foreign policy, but I've learned plenty from the ones that arrive in my inbox. People do hold deep attachment to Israel and horror at its government's conduct at the same time. My job is to hold the government to account without dismissing the attachment.
So, I don't think restoration of the UN position is as radical as it's being made out to be in mainstream media.
I think this policy position opens the way to a fresh approach to peace: equal democratic rights for everyone, with equal commitment to fighting anti-Palestinian racism and anti-Jewish racism alike.
If you think I've got this balance wrong, I'd genuinely like to hear from you.
Our local green party discussed the motion last night, some themes were: - bad timing as we approach the by-election as it's taken lots of attention, would have been better at the Spring conference
- the motion doesn't provide an action. (I have been listening to Jamie Driscoll on Accidental Gods podcast this week, stressing the importance of focusing on action, communicated in a simple slogan such as "Sanction Israel") 1/3
- recognition of the inherent racism of any ethno-state, that excludes others
- the British first colonised Palestine and assisted in the Nakbar, killing and displacing many Palestinians. We have responsibility to act to stop the genocide, devote resources to repair & rebuild Palestine and reverse the Israeli moves into Lebanon & Syria
- the huge concern we have as we watch genocide being live streamed every day, and no other political party in the UK taking any meaningful action to stop it
- concern for our Jewish friends, as they face significant racism. Many who oppose the actions of the Israeli state.
- Much of the media coverage, suggesting that criticism of Zionism is antisemitic is racist, as it suggests Jewish people are a monolith, with stereotyped views. 3/3
@StingrayBadger Thank you for this and I think this is exactly the conversation the motion should be generating.
On the timing, it's given us a real headache going into the by-election. Maybe spring would have been better, but with Gaza live-streamed daily, if not now, when?
I agree, statements without follow-through are pointless. Concrete steps like sanctions, arms embargo, and divestment from complicit companies are where I'll be pushing.
Our colonial history in Palestine is documented, and it obliges us to act rather than lecture.
On Jewish friends facing racism, your instinct is exactly right, and it's the same point I've laboured in my own post. Criticism of a state's conduct and solidarity with Jewish people against racism are not mutually exclusive, they are both duties on us.
Please keep feeding back what your local party discusses. Members shaping policy through debate like this is precisely how it's meant to work.
A care home resident, with dementia, mentioned he had had a been a member of the scooter and motorbike fraternity, so the care home put out a call and over a hundred people turned up with their bikes for him
BBC News: Bikers gather at care home to grant resident's wish - BBC News
From an inch away, the sculptures of Li Hongbo look like plaster. They are not. These large reproductions of classical busts are stacks of white paper.
From an inch away, the sculptures of Li Hongbo look like plaster. They are not. These large reproductions of classical busts are stacks of white paper.
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
England is across the Pond. France, a ferry ride beyond. Greece's lolling by azure seas. America's falling, by degrees.
Brazil's Rainforest may disappear. Argentina welcomes Nazis here. Germany's biggest foe is the AFD. The U.S. doesn't know what it wants to be.
Holland hopes the locks will hold. Hungary left Orbán in the cold. Australia worries 'bout AI in Health. America hurries to destroy itself.
Japan is waiting for the next big quake. Scotland wants independence, for goodness sake. The U.S. is declining, with only ill will. No longer shining, like the city on a hill.
Now I want to go to some cool and lively poetry slam somewhere. Those are cool to be at and to watch. From the words of the poet to hearing the audience react and snapping in approval of awesome well thoughtout words. That can be very empowering, need to find some in my area. Not a poet myself, but art is a necessity, and whether it's spoken word or music, love what we can create when we're open
Ah didn't know that, have you gone to a slam before? If you ever start creating more of your own poetry, would love to read. Indeed. Yep that's the extent of my rhyming lol
@rickf Thank you. Hopefully the poet who wrote the original poem this is based on, won't mind. He is here on the Fedi. I only mean full respect for his work.
My wife, who has #Crohns / #Colitis (one of the lucky one as she hasn't needed surgery), has been unwell today (poops), but has just realised that she had a different food last night - cauliflower - to see if it is still one of her intolerances, and it is!
Tucker Carlson saying we're taught that they're not even human is the most honest thing to come out of that interview , and the clip knows it. The question the podium asks next is the one nobody in that studio wanted to answer: who taught them?
"Sometimes I think there are direct biological factors at work—a type of education, feeding, and physical training which has produced a new kind of human being with an imbalance in his nature. He has been fed vitamins and filled with energies that are beyond the capacity of his intellect to discipline. He has been treated to forms of education which have released him from inhibitions. His body is vigorous. His mind is childish. His soul has been almost completely neglected."
"Mr. B has risen beyond his real abilities by virtue of health, good looks, and being a good mixer. He married for money and he has done lots of other things for money. His code is not his own; it is that of his class—no worse, no better, He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful. That is his sole measure of value—success. Nazism as a minority movement would not attract him. As a movement likely to attain power, it would."
"There he sits: he talks awkwardly rather than glibly; he is courteous. He commands a distant and cold respect. But he is a very dangerous man. Were he primitive and brutal he would be a criminal—a murderer. But he is subtle and cruel. He would rise high in a Nazi regime. It would need men just like him—intellectual and ruthless. But Mr. C is not a born Nazi. He is the product of a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly brutal snobbery. He is a sensitive, gifted man who has been humiliated into nihilism. He would laugh to see heads roll."
"I think young D over there is the only born Nazi in the room. Young D is the spoiled only son of a doting mother. He has never been crossed in his life. He spends his time at the game of seeing what he can get away with. He is constantly arrested for speeding and his mother pays the fines. He has been ruthless toward two wives and his mother pays the alimony. His life is spent in sensation-seeking and theatricality. He is utterly inconsiderate of everybody. He is very good-looking, in a vacuous, cavalier way, and inordinately vain. He would certainly fancy himself in a uniform that gave him a chance to swagger and lord it over others."
"Mrs. E would go Nazi as sure as you are born. That statement surprises you? Mrs. E seems so sweet, so clinging, so cowed. She is. She is a masochist. She is married to a man who never ceases to humiliate her, to lord it over her, to treat her with less consideration than he does his dogs. He is a prominent scientist, and Mrs. E, who married him very young, has persuaded herself that he is a genius, and that there is something of superior womanliness in her utter lack of pride, in her doglike devotion. She speaks disapprovingly of other “masculine” or insufficiently devoted wives. Her husband, however, is bored to death with her. He neglects her completely and she is looking for someone else before whom to pour her ecstatic self-abasement. She will titillate with pleased excitement to the first popular hero who proclaims the basic subordination of women."
"Mr. G is a very intellectual young man who was an infant prodigy. He has been concerned with general ideas since the age of ten and has one of those minds that can scintillatingly rationalize everything. I have known him for ten years and in that time have heard him enthusiastically explain Marx, social credit, technocracy, Keynesian economics, Chestertonian distributism, and everything else one can imagine. Mr. G will never be a Nazi, because he will never be anything. His brain operates quite apart from the rest of his apparatus. He will certainly be able, however, fully to explain and apologize for Nazism if it ever comes along. But Mr. G is always a “deviationist.” When he played with communism he was a Trotskyist; when he talked of Keynes it was to suggest improvement; Chesterton’s economic ideas were all right but he was too bound to Catholic philosophy. So we may be sure that Mr. G would be a Nazi with purse-lipped qualifications. He would certainly be purged."
"Mr. L has just come in. Mr. L is a lion these days. My hostess was all of a dither when she told me on the telephone, “ . . . and L is coming. You know it’s dreadfully hard to get him.” L is a very powerful labor leader. “My dear, he is a man of the people, but really fascinating.“ L is a man of the people and just exactly as fascinating as my horsy, bank vice-president, on-the-make acquaintance over there, and for the same reasons and in the same way. L makes speeches about the “third of the nation,” and L has made a darned good thing for himself out of championing the oppressed. He has the best car of anyone in this room; salary means nothing to him because he lives on an expense account. He agrees with the very largest and most powerful industrialists in the country that it is the business of the strong to boss the weak, and he has made collective bargaining into a legal compulsion to appoint him or his henchmen as “labor’s” agents, with the power to tax pay envelopes and do what they please with the money. L is the s
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"Mr. L has just come in. Mr. L is a lion these days. My hostess was all of a dither when she told me on the telephone, “ . . . and L is coming. You know it’s dreadfully hard to get him.” L is a very powerful labor leader. “My dear, he is a man of the people, but really fascinating.“ L is a man of the people and just exactly as fascinating as my horsy, bank vice-president, on-the-make acquaintance over there, and for the same reasons and in the same way. L makes speeches about the “third of the nation,” and L has made a darned good thing for himself out of championing the oppressed. He has the best car of anyone in this room; salary means nothing to him because he lives on an expense account. He agrees with the very largest and most powerful industrialists in the country that it is the business of the strong to boss the weak, and he has made collective bargaining into a legal compulsion to appoint him or his henchmen as “labor’s” agents, with the power to tax pay envelopes and do what they please with the money. L is the strongest natural-born Nazi in this room. Mr. B regards him with contempt tempered by hatred. Mr. B will use him. L is already parroting B’s speeches. He has the brains of Neanderthal man, but he has an infallible instinct for power. In private conversation he denounces the Jews as “parasites.” No one has ever asked him what are the creative functions of a highly paid agent, who takes a percentage off the labor of millions of men, and distributes it where and as it may add to his own political power."
"It’s fun—a macabre sort of fun—this parlor game of “Who Goes Nazi?” And it simplifies things—asking the question in regard to specific personalities.
Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.
Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them.
Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi. It’s an amusing game. Try it at the next big party yo
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"It’s fun—a macabre sort of fun—this parlor game of “Who Goes Nazi?” And it simplifies things—asking the question in regard to specific personalities.
Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.
Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them.
Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi. It’s an amusing game. Try it at the next big party you go to."
I know, you know I've said this before but today's headline in the Guardian 'live' section just (as always) makes me grind my teeth...
housing price rises are not 'growth'... they are, let's be clear: ASSET PRICE INFLATION.... and as such *not* a good thing that needs to be maintained or worried about when it such inflation is 'weak'.
Until we end this mind set we will be unlikely to solve our housing problems
I am not just another balding, overweight white guy wearing the same eyeglasses as the next balding, overweight white guy. That’s because I'm bald on top, not balding. And I’m overweight because my wife is an excellent cook and my extra pounds are just a physical manifestation of her love.
I am not the guy who drives like an idiot. I drive like your Grandma now. Most of the time. I drove like an idiot 40 years ago. Driving is overrated.
I am not the guy whose lawn looks better than yours, whose car is newer, who hosts the block party and the talks shit about everyone else on the block to his closest buddies. That’s because I hate mowing the lawn, am happy with my 10-year old car, and you’d never catch me at a block party. I like my neighbors and say hi, and bring a select few a fresh-baked nut roll at Christmastime, and I’d rather hang with my family.
I am definitely not the smartest guy in the room, nor do I ever want to be. I know that I don’t al
I am not just another balding, overweight white guy wearing the same eyeglasses as the next balding, overweight white guy. That’s because I'm bald on top, not balding. And I’m overweight because my wife is an excellent cook and my extra pounds are just a physical manifestation of her love.
I am not the guy who drives like an idiot. I drive like your Grandma now. Most of the time. I drove like an idiot 40 years ago. Driving is overrated.
I am not the guy whose lawn looks better than yours, whose car is newer, who hosts the block party and the talks shit about everyone else on the block to his closest buddies. That’s because I hate mowing the lawn, am happy with my 10-year old car, and you’d never catch me at a block party. I like my neighbors and say hi, and bring a select few a fresh-baked nut roll at Christmastime, and I’d rather hang with my family.
I am definitely not the smartest guy in the room, nor do I ever want to be. I know that I don’t always know. I have some brains, but it took me a long time to develop any street smarts. I did well across the board but could never choose one path. I love to do many things.
Holy cow, I still have 3800+ characters?!
I think that’s enough of an intro for now. But I’ll close with these thoughts:
Mean people suck. Love and joy are everything.
Thanks for reading this far. Can’t wait to see the world through your eyes.
After an intro like that - followed! I completely understand about the waist line, it was similar for me until I was told I was pre-diabetic, but I am now eating more rabbit food, and walking more!
I need to walk more, for sure. My knees and ankles are good but my hips get sore. Drives me crazy. I think I need to stretch every day for a month then try again.
They were the same type of boots—I have "A" (respectable), "B" (everyday), and "C" (work) pairs. As they get worn, I throw away C, demote A to B and B to C, and get a new "A" pair! At the time, I was doing a big DIY project, and "C" was nearing doom.
I was wondering if you asked a chatbot to spew this until I got to the holy cow part :P Thank you for driving like my Grandma. (We just had two high schoolers run down yesterday 7:35 in the morning by hit-and-run ... one's critical, the other stable... and people are goin' "but they were on an e-bike!!!")
Costa Rica is the first tropical country in the world to successfully reverse deforestation, nearly doubling its forest cover from a historic low of 21–26% in the 1980s to nearly 60% today.
'Whatever your view on assisted dying, decent palliative care should be non-negotiable'.
And, she is right to say that after the debates about assisted dying highlighted the failure(s) of palliative care for many, the priority needs to be invested in & improve the care available to us at the end of our lives.
During the assisted dying debate, most politicians agreed on one thing – palliative care reform is urgent. Patients and those of us who care for them are waiting, says Jane Turner, chief nurse at Sue Ryder
It’s a scandal that community nursing services have been stripped to the bone, while palliative care itself is only part NHS funded with the rest being charitable donations. No other part of core health care is so badly funded.
Oddly just watched RTE’s adaptation of A Man with of those faces by Caimh McDonnell and the series is callled Tall Tales and Murder. First episode features a nurse in a care home who helps the elderly on their way.
john lomax
in reply to Dwight (DB) 🇨🇦 • •Abso flipping lutely lively!
Kim Possible
in reply to Dwight (DB) 🇨🇦 • • •