Nearly one in five British Jews now back the Green Party, JPR data shows, even as the party's own conference motions call Israel's military a "terror group" and its conduct in Gaza a "genocide."
Jewish support for the Green Party of England and Wales reached 18% in June 2025, more than double the 7% recorded among the general population, according to JPR's November 2025 report by Executive Director Dr. Jonathan Boyd. The same Green Party voted at its September 2024 conference to become the first British party to officially call Israel's conduct in Gaza a "genocide," and at its October 2025 conference to designate the Israeli military a "terror group." British Jewish voters are moving toward the one major UK party taking Britain's harshest official line on Israel — a shift that echoes tensions already visible on British campuses, including at King's College London.
Where Is the Green Party's Jewish Vote Surge Coming From?
JPR's own cross tabulation identifies the source. Among British Jews who self-identify as anti-Zionist, a group JPR sizes at roughly 12% of the community, 62% say they would vote Green, compared with 0% who favor Reform UK. Boyd's report states that "Reform UK is more likely to attract male, older, orthodox, and Zionist Jews, whereas the Greens are more likely to attract younger, unaffiliated and anti-Zionist ones."
The wider numbers show how much ground has shifted. Combined Labour and Conservative support among British Jews fell from 80% in 2023 to 75% at the 2024 general election, then to 58% by June 2025, the lowest level JPR has ever recorded. But unlike the national electorate, where the collapsing center has flowed mainly to Reform UK, Jewish voters have moved disproportionately the other way: Jewish Reform UK support stood at 11% in June 2025, against 28% nationally, while Jewish Green support stood at 18%, against 7% nationally.
What Has the Green Party Said About Israel?
The party's own conference motions set the record. In September 2024, delegates voted to describe Israel's governance of the occupied territories as "apartheid" and its conduct in Gaza as "genocide," according to the Green Party's own published statement. In October 2025, members passed a further motion calling to designate the Israeli military a "terror group," to apologize for the Balfour Declaration, and to end British training of Israeli soldiers, according to Middle East Eye's report on the conference vote. These are not fringe remarks from individual members. They are the party's adopted policy.
The platform extends beyond conference motions into concrete policy asks. Green Party members have called for a full suspension of UK arms exports to Israel, including components for F-35 fighter jets manufactured at BAE Systems sites in England, arguing continued licensed transfers make Britain complicit in weapons used in Gaza. That is a materially larger policy ask than anything proposed by Reform UK, whose leader Nigel Farage rejects the genocide characterization of Israel's conduct and supports continued arms sales to Israel, according to JPR's November 2025 report.
The party has not been free of its own antisemitism controversies even as anti-Zionist Jewish support for it grows. Joe Belcher, a Green candidate for Rushall-Shelfield in Walsall, was suspended by the party in 2024 after he suggested on social media that "the leaders of Israel and Gaza conspired to carry out what happened on Oct 7 for financial gain," and questioned "why Hamas commanders" would have "sold their people down the river" by attacking Israel, according to the Jewish Chronicle. The party nonetheless allowed Belcher to stand again in the May 2026 local elections, and separate Green candidates in London and Walsall faced scrutiny over posts including one describing Zionism as "the Nazism of our time," according to a further Jewish Chronicle investigation. Antisemitism controversies tied to British institutions are not confined to party politics: a separate King's College London statement calling Israel's conduct in Gaza a "genocide" and urging boycott drew similar scrutiny in August 2026.
Who Is Zack Polanski, the Green Party's Jewish Leader?
Zack Polanski, elected Green Party leader in September 2025 with 20,411 votes against 3,705 combined for his rivals, is himself Jewish. He has said he is "proud to be Jewish" but "certainly not a Zionist," and that "Israel has changed" since his upbringing in "a very Zionist household," according to the Times of Israel's July 2025 profile. Speaking at a National March for Palestine in June 2025, Polanski said the Labour government is "not just complicit, they are active participants" in genocide in Gaza, according to the Green Party's own account of his remarks.
What Does the Green Party's Jewish Vote Shift Actually Mean?
A significant and rapidly growing segment of British Jewish voters now backs a party whose official Israel positions, adopted twice by conference vote in thirteen months, sit far outside anything the community's mainstream institutions, such as the Board of Deputies, have endorsed. That is the finding. The Labour-Conservative duopoly that held 80% of Jewish support in 2023 held only 58% two years later, a collapse comparable in speed to the national one, but the destination differs: nationally the center has flowed mainly to Reform UK, while among British Jews it has flowed disproportionately to the Greens.
The shift also tracks a broader, slower change beneath it. JPR separately found that the share of British Jews who self-identify as Zionist fell from 72% in 2013 to 65% in 2024, an eleven-point decline over roughly a decade. That erosion does not by itself explain an 18% Green vote share reached within about two years, but it suggests the anti-Zionist minority driving the Green surge is not an isolated bloc. It is the leading edge of a slower, wider change in how British Jews as a whole describe their own relationship to Zionism.
The 18% figure does not mean British Jews as a whole have turned against Israel. JPR's own data shows the surge is concentrated almost entirely in the anti-Zionist minority, a group it sizes at roughly 12% of the community, 62% of whom back the Greens. What it does mean is that a party built partly on describing Israel's conduct as genocide and apartheid, and led by a self-described non-Zionist Jew, is now the fastest-growing political home for a measurable slice of British Jewry, at the same time as Reform UK draws a smaller, older, more Orthodox and more Zionist slice in the opposite direction. British Jewish politics is not shifting in one direction. It is splitting into two.
