UK Green Party leader Zack Polanski is an ‘extremist,’ says Israel’s deputy FM

UK Green Party leader Zack Polanski is an “extremist” who “legitimizes violence against Jews,” charges Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel, after the British party leader sparked anger for his reaction to Wednesday’s antisemitic terror stabbing in London’s Golders Green that left two Jewish men seriously wounded.

After video of police subduing and kicking Essa Suleiman, the 45-year-old Somalia-born UK citizen who is suspected of behind behind the attack, went viral online, Polanski retweeted, without comment, a post on X alleging that officers were “repeatedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head” when he was already incapacitated after being tased.

Asked if she agrees with an Israeli embassy source that labeled Polanski as an “extremist,” Haskel tells conservative British broadcaster GB News: “It is as simple as that.”

“Him and his party are continuing this path of conspiracy theories and hatred towards Jews and towards the Jewish community and toward British Jewish citizens,” she says.

“Sometimes an apology is too little, too late, especially when it comes to Polanski. When you choose to legitimize violence against Jews, you don’t just make a mistake – you cross a moral line that should never be crossed.”

“It normalizes hatred, emboldens others, and corrodes the standards that hold a society together. And once that line is breached, it cannot simply be undone with a few words of regret: you risk spending the rest of your life apologizing for it,” she adds.

Polanski, who is Jewish, apologized on Friday, saying that: “Everyone in leadership has a responsibility for lowering the temperature at a time of such tension, and I apologize for sharing a tweet in haste.”

Ahead of local elections next week, Polanski’s party has been embroiled in a string of antisemitic scandals.