The Green party has no problem getting attention these days – but it’s for all the wrong reasons. A second Green councillor is now being investigated by the party for using ‘inflammatory rhetoric’ about the Israel-Gaza conflict in the Middle East. When will they learn?
Alexi Dimond was re-elected in last week’s local elections to his council seat in Sheffield. Though newly under investigation, the eco-activist has made no secret of his views over the last few months. Posting regularly on X about the conflict in the Middle East, Dimond has regularly placed blame at the feet of Western leaders for their role in the war — and has even drawn comparisons between a town hall flying an Israeli flag and, um, a South African flag being flown at the height of apartheid. Crikey.
The eco-activist has made no secret of his views
On 7 October, after Hamas attacked Israel, Dimond took to X to accuse the Israeli government of apartheid, demanding Benjamin Netanyahu’s government ‘end of the occupation’ of Gaza. Three days later, he admitted that the Hamas violence was a war crime — but was quick to focus attention back on Israel, writing: ‘So is the Israeli occupations, apartheid system, indiscriminate bombings and killings.’ Dimond blasted the Israeli flag as one of ‘an apartheid regime conducting a genocidal campaign against a captive civilian population’. And it wasn’t just Israel in the firing line: Dimond has accused the US president of genocide, the leaders to the UK and Germany as ‘incontrovertibly evil’ and even took aim at the opposition leader, saying: ‘A vote for Keir Starmer is a vote for Netanyahu.’
Dimond isn’t alone in his views. Indeed just yesterday it transpired that Mothin Ali, who was elected to Leeds city council last week, is also under investigation. Ali labelled a rabbi a ‘creep’ and a ‘kind of animal’ for returning to his Israeli Defence Forces unit; and when he won his council seat last week, he celebrated by yelling ‘Allah Akbar!’.
Some senior political figures, including Sir Peter Mandelson, write the Greens off as ‘hardline…activists’. Mandelson even went so far as to slam the Green party for ‘becoming a dustbin, a bit of repository’ for the hard-left during a recent podcast. But not everyone concurs. Former adviser to Tony Blair, John McTernan, tweeted today that he strongly disagreed with Mandelson’s analysis, adding that ‘they are a serious force in politics…to voters’ and that ‘the Greens are a party Labour has to contest, not condescendingly abuse’.
But whatever the Greens are to Labour, the eco-zealots will need to clean up their act quickly…
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