The Australian Greens and the demise of their Jewish Network

About a week ago, a colleague who was formerly a member of the Australian Greens, passed on a flier promoting a Jewish Greens Shabbat Potluck fundraiser event: https://my.greens.org.au/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=25206.

Referring to the two invited ‘special guests’ who are both known for their systematic opposition to any proposals by governments or civil society bodies to define and combat antisemitism, they commented sarcastically ‘That’s really a line-up from hell–no one would believe it as a parody’.

This comment on the current ‘bogus’ Jewish Greens led me to reflect on the fate of the former bona fide Jewish Greens Network (JGN) which existed from approximately 2017-2023.

But firstly, a bit of history. In 2015, I authored a book chapter on the history of the Australian Greens’ attitude to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dating back to 2003. That chapter examined a number of key chronological events and patterns including the Greens-dominated Marrickville Council’s support for the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement; the broader divisions within the Greens over whether or not to support the BDS movement; and the extent to which BDS proponents within the Greens were employing openly antisemitic tropes as a core political strategy. Whilst acknowledging the Greens officially endorsed in principle a two-state position, I also noted the absence of any pro-Israel or even pro-I/P peace faction within the Party to balance the domination of the NSW Branch by pro-BDS hardliners. I particularly highlighted the failure of the Greens to actively engage with any progressive and/or peace groups inside Israel.

I concluded my chapter as follows:

The broader political challenge for the Australian Greens is whether the Party wishes to develop realistic progressive policies from an environmental perspective that influence mainstream debates, or whether it wishes to be relegated to the ideological margins. Dalliances with the BDS movement by significant groups within the Party suggest an attraction to the latter pathway. Conversely, the development of a positive pro-two states and anti-BDS policy that aims to advance Palestinian national rights by engaging with both progressive Israelis and Palestinians and eschewing strategies that exclusively blame either side for the ongoing conflict would arguably be indicative of the former’ (Mendes 2015: 205).

Given the evidence tabled, I was highly sceptical the Greens would head in the preferred direction, and with hindsight rightly so.

The authentic Jewish Greens Network

 The Jewish Greens Network or J-Greens Victoria was formed in early 2017 to promote a Jewish presence among Greens, and a progressive Green influence within the Jewish community. Its foundation seemed to be influenced by a number of contentious events that impacted negatively on Jewish Greens members in 2016. One was the decision by the Greens candidate for the Seat of Melbourne Ports (now renamed McNamara), Stephanie Hodgins-May (now an elected Federal Senator) to boycott a Jewish community election debate due to Zionism Victoria acting as a co-host, claiming she disagreed with their political views. This seemed strange given Ms Hodgins-May had previously gone on the record as stating her support for a two state solution and opposition to the BDS movement which were views broadly consistent with those of Zionism Victoria (Hodgins-May 2016). Additionally, that same week the Greens MP for Melbourne Adam Bandt addressed the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) which was pro-BDS and opposed to a two states solution (Harris 2016; Levi 2016).

The Hodgins-May debacle caused major consternation within Jewish Greens ranks. One Jewish Greens member commented:

I spoke to Steph the night before she decided to withdraw, explaining to her that withdrawing from the debate would do irreparable damage to the relationship between the Greens and my community as it would send the message that the Greens don’t recognize the right for Jews to express their identity in the form of a democratic state. Despite my advice, Steph withdrew from the forum, and this ended up costing her hundreds if not thousands of votes in my community.

Further concern was provoked by the speech presented by Greens leader Richard Di Natale during a parliamentary condolence motion for the death of former Israeli leader Shimon Peres, which criticized his actions as Prime Minister in defense of Israel’s security and downplayed his long-standing advocacy for Israeli-Palestinian peace (Di Natale 2016). A Jewish Greens member commented bitterly:

Richard’s statement (made as leader of the Party) is not just offensive. It appears to be targeted at the section of the Jewish community most likely to vote for us – those who support Israel, but strongly support the need to find a two-state solution to the conflict. Peres was the leader who actually negotiated the Oslo Agreement, and sought to win support for it in the Israeli population. Richard’s intervention will be seen as a strong ‘fuck you’ message to these people. They will be hard to win back.

Another Jewish Greens member voiced similar disgust:

But then, from our own state, our party’s leader responds to a condolence motion for Shimon Peres with the most mean-spirited comment imaginable…There is a sense that the Australian Greens are following in the footsteps of UK Labour in making a concerted attempt to become Judenrein.

In late 2016, Ittay Flescher, a Jewish Greens member strongly connected to the mainstream Jewish community who would later immigrate to Israel, prepared a briefing titled Improving relations between the Greens and the Jewish community. That briefing argued optimistically that there was considerable common ground between Australian Jews and the Greens on a wide range of issues including asylum seekers, multiculturalism, education, climate change, animal rights, feminism, GLBT rights, and racial vilification. However, it acknowledged tensions concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whilst implying that the Greens shared mainstream Jewish views in favour of a two state solution, and opposition to the racist BDS movement.

On reading this document, I wondered whether Flescher or any other leading JGN members had read my earlier book chapter (discussed above) given it arguably provided a road map detailing the challenges they would face in navigating the entrenched hostility within influential sections of the Greens to Israel and supporters of Zionism (however defined) within Australia.

Regardless, the JGN progressed, seeking to build connections between Jews and the Greens, and to allay concerns in the Jewish community that the Greens held an ‘anti-Jewish or anti-Israel bias’. They participated in Jewish community events such as the In One Voice festival, and the Limmud Oz festival. They sought to engage with Jewish youth groups, progressive Zionist organisations and progressive Jewish individuals they perceived as sharing Greens values. They reached out to Greens branches to enhance their understanding of Jewish perspectives on Israel and Zionism, and they attacked allegations from a Liberal Party source (in my opinion untrue) that a prominent Greens candidate was pro-BDS and/or antisemitic.

The JGN pushed back against manifestations of anti-Zionist fundamentalism including pro-BDS campaigns within Greens ranks. For example, in early 2017 they sought input into the planned itinerary of a Greens tour of Israel and the Palestinian territories auspiced by APAN. The JGN wrote to Greens Senator Janet Rice to encourage the tour to include engagement with what they termed ‘Greens value-aligned progressive organisations in Israel’ such as Peace Now, Rabbis for Human Rights and the Meretz political party. Their letter underlined the value for the tour group of developing an ‘understanding’ of the views of ‘the millions of Israelis who support a two-state solution’.

The JGN encouraged Greens parliamentarians and candidates to accept speaking invitations from Zionist organisations to advance dialogue and understanding. In September 2017, they praised Greens leader Senator Richard Di Natale for addressing a Zionist Federation of Australia political seminar held in Canberra: https://www.zfa.com.au/zfa-political-seminar/.

In May 2018, they strongly opposed attempts by Senators Janet Rice and Lee Rhiannon to pass a national conference motion endorsing the so-called Right of Return of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war to Israel which most Jews regard as an implicit call for Israel’s destruction. They also expressed concern that the Party remained unpopular in the Jewish community due to numerous factors including: Senator Lee Rhiannon’s anti-Zionist fundamentalist views and the fact that on retirement she was being replaced in the Senate by Dr Mehreen Faruqi who was known to hold similar views; the need for Hodgins-May to apologize for her 2016 election campaign boycott of Zionism Victoria (discussed above) in order to rehabilitate her reputation in the local Jewish community; the 2016 attack by Senator Di Natale on the late Shimon Peres (also discussed above); and an antisemitic attack perpetrated by a known Greens member on an elected Jewish Labor Party Councillor at a meeting of the City of Port Phillip local government: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/greens-accused-of-antisemitism-after-30-pieces-of-silver-slur/news-story/67ecc752f44020a7646c2d2ae033611c.

In June 2019, the JGN opposed an Israel/Palestine motion authored by the pro-BDS NSW Greens which presented both anti-Zionist fundamentalist and openly antisemitic views. The motion rejected Greens support for a two state solution, and instead demanded that Israel be transformed into an Arab state of Greater Palestine, the so-called ‘one state solution’. The motion also included the use of blaming the victim terms such as ‘fake accusations of antisemitism’ and ‘conflation of lack of support for the Israeli government with antisemitism’ in a fallacious attempt to deny increasing convergence between political anti-Zionism and racist antisemitism.

In response, the JGN denounced the failure of the motion to reconcile the competing Palestinian and Israeli narratives regarding conflict causes and potential resolution, and recommended an alternative policy agenda that would advance ‘the cause of peace, human rights, and self-determination for both peoples’. They also highlighted the work they had undertaken over a number of years to reassure the Jewish community ‘that, despite occasional rhetoric to the contrary, the Greens policy is for a two state solution, that we oppose violence on both sides, and that the party is not antisemitic’.

They added as follows:

The J-Greens are deeply troubled that NSW Greens could take it upon themselves to determine what is and what is not antisemitism, especially when their own fixation on Israel, to the exclusion of other global conflicts, itself can be read as antisemitic. If the Greens wish to learn how to assess whether or not there is antisemitism, they should consult established authorities in the field who have knowledge, understanding and experience of antisemitism.

The Aftermath of October 7

Following the October 2023 Hamas massacre, the Australian Greens quickly pivoted to a uniformly anti-Zionist fundamentalist position (Mendes 2024), and shortly afterwards to an institutionally antisemitic perspective (Byrne 2025; Mendes 2026). Some of the most malevolent manifestations of the latter included multiple Greens Senators repeatedly denying the existence of antisemitism in Australian universities; using reprehensible terms such as ‘weaponisation’ and ‘conflation’ (Seymour 2026) to blame the victims of antisemitism even when responding to the January 2026 parliamentary condolence motion for the Bondi Beach attack; the October 2025 statement by Greens leader Larissa Waters attributing prime responsibility for the Manchester terror attack to the Australian government rather than the perpetrators; and consistent opposition by both Greens parliamentarians and local government councillors (Klein 2026) to proposed anti-racist measures to combat antisemitism (Mendes 2025; 2026).

In response to this ideological ambush, the JGN quickly folded with most of its leading activists condemning the Party’s capture by pro-racist forces and resigning their membership (Demetriadi 2024; Flescher 2024; Hill 2023). Some had already left the Greens prior to October 2023 in opposition to extremist agendas on other issues.

The not dissimilar UK Jewish Greens group are currently experiencing similar challenges reconciling their universalistic anti-racist views, and the identitarian (often racist) politics driving a ‘progressive except for Jews’ agenda. The leader of the UK Greens Zack Polanski, who is himself Jewish, questioned in response to the Manchester terror attack and other violence against Jewish institutions, ‘whether it’s a perception of unsafety or whether it’s actual unsafety’ (cited in Apostolou 2026). Other groups and individuals within the Greens have accused Jews rather than racists of perpetrating the arson attacks on Jewish ambulances in Golders Green (i.e. a so-called ‘false flag’operation), and attacked the Jewish Greens for calling out antisemites and antisemitism within the Party (Bell-Cross 2026; Snepvangers & Miller 2026).

The end of the Australian Jewish Greens Network and the aggressive attacks on the UK Jewish greens raise the question as to whether it is still possible to be a self-respecting Jew among progressives and a progressive among Jews. Many of the remaining Jewish Left groups globally – for example the Jewish Voice for Peace in the USA, the Jewish Voice for Labour in the UK and the Jewish Council of Australia – seem to be populated principally by Tokenistic Jews, that is ‘Jews who internalize manifestations of antisemitism in order to conform to dominant social codes within their ideological communities, actively align with and provide a Jewish alibi for pro-racist groups, and deny or belittle Jewish lived experiences of racism’ (Mendes 2026). If those frameworks provide a reliable guide to the future, it would signal a dismal end to over 150 years of disproportionate Jewish engagement with global progressive movements.

Acknowledgements

 I am grateful to a former member of the Jewish Greens Network who kindly shared copies of internal correspondence from 2016-19. The views expressed in this article are solely my own.

 References

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