The vote, which took place in Wisconsin, was done rather surreptitiously. No discussion or debate took place among party members or within state parties. According to Salzman, 72 delegates actually voted. Fifty-five were in favor, 7 were opposed, 10 abstained. Mohammed K. Abed of the Wisconsin Green Party, who is also a member of al-Awda (The Palestinian Right of Return), initiated the Resolution but he was joined by non-Muslim and non-Palestinian international and national GP members such as Justine McCabe, Scott McLarty, Ben Manski, and Ruth Weill. The Green Party has also reached a mysterious “Memo of Understanding” with the American Muslim Association.
The al-Awda website describes Israel as a “colonial settler” and “terrorist state” and refers to its government as the “U.S.-backed Zionist junta.” It demands that charges against Professor Sami al-Arian be dropped, and appeals for funding for Palestinian causes. Al-Awda condemns Israeli “assasinations” (but not Palestinian and Islamist serial suicide-murders) and focuses on Palestinian suffering as a function of Zionist Occupation (but fails to mention the corruption and murderousness of the Palestinian Authority as a contributing cause to Palestinian misery).
Al-Awda’s website does not mention any ecological concerns nor does it discuss the Palestinian trashing of the Gazan greenhouses – which American Jewish philanthropists specifically funded so that Palestinians might take them over.
Indeed, Resolution 190 is a serious distraction from pressing green issues, including health care, ocean fisheries, endangered rainforests, etc.
The Greens are notoriously “anti-war.” This really means that they are anti-President Bush’s Iraq war but do not necessarily oppose the war against the Jews or the war against black African Christians and animists who are being genocidally slaughtered in Sudan by ethnic Arab Muslims.
Some Green Party members and sympathizers are worried about this latest turn of events. They fear that Green Party candidates will lose in the coming elections because of this misguided stand. Oregon businessman Gary Acheatel voted Green in the elections of 2000. He has always “admired the Green agenda.” He now says that “it is time for people to stop complaining about Israel’s poor image and start making the case for Israel.”
He has founded a new group, Advocates for Israel, which will offer speakers and post educational material and resources at its website: www.advocatesforisrael.org. He is also circulating a petition to the Green Party leadership and membership to rescind Resolution 190. Acheatel has joined the Green Party for one reason: “To create a groundswell of member activism to reverse the party’s anti-Israel resolution.
When Salzman told people she had been secretly expelled from the Green Party’s National Women’s Caucus and removed from their listserv group, no one responded. Both she and Acheatel have found a level of complacency and fear among progressives that is deeply disturbing. She says that “all the anti-Israel stuff is a deflection away from the way Muslims treat women,” and that “there is a much bigger story here that has to do with the radical Left embracing traditional enemies: radical Islamists who hate the Left.”
Shortly after Salzman and Acheteal began their campaign within the Green Party to revisit Resolution 190, the Israel Green Party issued a “Response.” Pe’er Visner, the Israeli Green Party chairman (he’s also the deputy mayor of Tel Aviv), “strongly opposed” the resolution. “We are disappointed that our sister party in the U.S. did not consult with the Israel Green Party before passing this resolution” and “hope that this breach in trust will be remedied with an apology and appropriate action.”
The Israel Green Party statement agrees with Salzman and Acheatel that the “U.S. Green Party has been hijacked by elements of a hidden agenda to undermine the right of Israel to exist.” Visner describes the excessive human rights violations perpetrated by Palestinians and the nature of Israeli self-defense and concludes that the “U.S. Green Party…is making unfair and unbalanced decisions based on partial information.”