Zack Polanski spreads definitional fog instead of confronting a settler-colonial regime

~ Georgio Lee ~

He is nothing short of a sensation. No matter the metric, the Green Party and Zack Polanski have exploded in popularity. membership has nearly quadrupled since September 2025 when he took over as leader. The slogans are catchy – “make hope normal again”. He is well spoken, impassioned, and dispatches with ferocity the nonsense thrown at him by the establishment media, leading many to draw comparisons to a certain Zohran Mamdani.

The Mayor of New York City is a good case-study, particularly when you look at how pro-Palestine his campaign was. Yet since getting into power, Mamdani has kept on Jessica Tisch as NYPD Commissioner, who had referred to the Palestinian encampments at Columbia and NYU as “especially despicable”. To run the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, he has appointed Phylisa Wisdom, who led the New York Jewish Agenda. This is a group that describes itself as “liberal and progressive Zionists” and opposes boycotts, divestment and sanctions. It was all bluster, meaningless words that were uttered to harness the energy around the massacre of the peoples of Palestine.

Now then to Zack Polanski. While he openly accuses Israel of genocide, he doesn’t support anything beyond the old ‘two state solution’, and his side of the Party opposed the “Zionism is Racism” motion brought at the Spring Conference in March. Green MP Carla Denyer was set to speak against it on behalf of Polanski and the party leadership, and a procedural filibuster by his allies ran out the clock before the motion could be debated or voted on.

In the media, rather than any structural critique of Zionist ideology, Polanski dodges into definitional fog. Jewish News reported that Polanski’s mother, sister and other relatives have publicly expressed support for Israel, attending demonstrations and supporting Jewish organisations after the 7 October massacre. Pressed on LBC about whether he’d call his own mother a racist if she identified as a Zionist, he could only offer the usual: “What do you mean by Zionism?”.

Polanski has said that “the version of Zionism that Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government put forward” is racist because “it clearly involves the extermination of the Palestinian people”. What he’s refused to condemn is Zionism itself – the settler colonial project that begun under British sponsorship and continues to this day. This is what we would call a liberal Zionist position: a blindness to how Jewish supremacy has defined the Israeli state since its inception.

In fact, Zohran Mamdani identified as an anti-Zionist in his campaign much more than Zack Polanski has. But even he backtracked and appointed liberal Zionists to high-profile positions within government. But as anarchists, let’s not kid ourselves: Even if Zack Polanski wanted to seriously confront Zionism (which the evidence suggests he doesn’t), if voted in he would have absolutely zero chance of doing so, let alone confronting capitalism.

Ultimately, the “hope” Zack Polanski offers is nothing more than a politician’s calculated rhetoric for electoral gain. Without this “hope” that political parties peddle, with veiled language and false promises, people would have no choice but to seek more radical solutions to their lived situations and promote them through direct action. This might mean a visit to a munitions factory, organising in our communities against deportations, building mutual aid networks… it’s up to the person or peoples to decide. The only universal answers are the false ones politicians keep trying to sell.

Good people who are anti-capitalist and anti-Zionist, are wasting their time on the Green Party, on Your Party, on any party. Taking power is not a ‘useful goal’ but something that blinds our movements. If we set ourselves up to pursue electoral power, we are forever going to be thinking of the future and neglect to nurture any activity that is actually revolutionary.

Image: Zack Polanski on Facebook