Fifteen news reports on the Greens' Zionism vote gave the Israeli state 773 words and Palestinians 98. Thirteen quoted no Palestinian at all.

On Sunday 4 October, at the Brighton Centre, members of the Green Party of England and Wales voted 1,022 to 813, or 55.7 per cent, to adopt a motion titled Zionism is racism. The members' group Greens for Palestine brought it. Lubna Speitan, a Palestinian member, proposed it.

The motion defines Zionism as a political ideology that called for, and now maintains, an ethnonationalist Jewish state in historic Palestine, to the exclusion or domination of the non-Jewish population. It says it is aimed at that ideology and its practice, not at anyone's religion or ethnicity, and that not all Jews are Zionists. It says anti-Zionism should not be equated with antisemitism. It commits the party to the Palestinian right of return, to boycott, divestment and sanctions, and to a full arms embargo on Israel.

Members rejected an amendment to drop the single Palestinian state, 920 to 821 on the card vote. They also rejected an amendment that would have written into the motion that it could not be used to discipline members for belonging to a synagogue that calls itself Zionist. The proposers said it was not a disciplinary measure.

We read every news report on the vote from the Western mainstream and tabloid press that we could retrieve in full: 15 reports from British broadcasters, papers and websites and from the international wires, published that day or the next. We counted every word by whose position it carried. The method is at the end of this piece.

We found 22 headlines on the vote in these outlets and in The Times, the Financial Times and Sky News. None names Palestinians, Palestine, Gaza or genocide. Three name Israel, each time for its reaction: the Telegraph's evening headline carries its accusation of terrorism, Reuters' later headline says the vote angered Israel, and Euronews leads on Israel barring Polanski. Three more lead on an accusation against the party: the Financial Times, the Daily Mail and HuffPost UK. Four lead on a split in the party or on Polanski's absence.

Across the 15 reports, opponents of the motion got 5,632 words and supporters got 620: about 9 to one. Opponents got more space than supporters in every one of the 15. The Independent, Daily Mirror, HuffPost UK, AFP and Euronews quoted no supporter at all.

Two reports quoted a Palestinian, and both quoted the same woman. The Telegraph gave Lubna Speitan 50 of its 1,755 words, after giving Israel's foreign ministry 220. The National gave her 48. The other 13 reports quoted no Palestinian on a motion about Palestinians.

No report quoted a Jewish supporter of the motion. The Telegraph mentioned Jewish anti-Zionist groups once, in a photo caption. The Guardian alone reported the Jewish Greens' own poll, in which 81 per cent of those who answered said they did not identify as Zionist. Apart from Polanski, who backed the motion's definition and wanted its single-state clause changed, every Jewish voice the 15 reports quoted opposed the motion.

Eight reports quoted the Israeli state: its foreign ministry, its foreign minister or its president. Across the corpus the Israeli state got 773 words and Palestinians got 98, about 8 to one.

The motion builds its case on its definition of Zionism. Seven of the 15 reports never told readers what that definition is.

The Telegraph's reporter wrote, in the paper's own voice, that the vote means Zionism, defined as the right to Jewish self-determination in an ancestral homeland, is now considered racist by the party. That is the definition the motion's opponents used: Israel's foreign ministry and the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, both put Jewish self-determination at the centre of their attack in the same article. The motion's definition appears nowhere in it.

AFP printed the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, defining Zionism as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, and never printed the motion's definition. Euronews did the same.

What they cut from the motion

Ten reports quoted the single-state clause. Eight stopped before the words equal rights for all: BBC News, The Telegraph, The Independent, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, PA Media, AFP and Euronews. Only the Guardian and the Express printed them. Two of the 15 reports mentioned the right of return at all: the Independent and GB News.

Three reports then told readers what the clause means, in their own words. The Telegraph's reporter wrote that the motion called for the abolition of the state of Israel; the motion does not use the word. The Guardian's first sentence said it calls for Israel to be replaced by a single Palestinian state, and its fifth paragraph quoted equal rights for all. The Daily Mail wrote that the clause had been branded a plan to destroy Israel itself, and did not say who had branded it.

The motion says the material result of Zionism has been the dehumanisation, displacement, dispossession and destruction of Palestinians. Its supporters pointed to Israel's genocide in Gaza. Three of the 15 reports never use the word genocide: BBC News, Daily Express and GB News. Eight use it only inside someone else's quote. Four use it in the reporter's own voice, and only as a claim. Reuters and CNN write that the British government says courts must decide whether Israel's actions are genocide, and that Israel rejects the charge. AFP and Euronews write, near the end, that UN investigators accused Israel of genocide and that Israel rejected the finding. No report states it as fact.

Polanski told the BBC that the motion defines Zionism as the displacement and genocide of the Palestinian people, and that this is clearly racism. Seven reports carried those words. The BBC's own report gives his view without them, and its only description of Gaza in its own voice is the conflict in Gaza.

After the vote, Polanski, his deputies and the party's five MPs signed a joint statement. One of its sentences commits them to stand in opposition to genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and the illegal occupation. Eleven reports quoted the statement. Six kept that sentence. Five quoted the statement and left it out: BBC News, Daily Express, Reuters, CNN and Euronews.

Reuters paraphrased the deputy leader Mothin Ali saying the Palestinian death toll was the key context for the vote, and inserted into the middle of his sentence, in its own words, that what it called Israel's conflict with Hamas followed Hamas's 2023 attack on an Israeli music festival. The words Reuters quotes from Ali do not mention it. CNN ran the same sentence. No report gave a number for the dead in Gaza. The Daily Mail alone gave a scale, tens of thousands, in a clause introducing Ali's quote.

The Telegraph published its report at 3pm and changed it twice.

1. 3.00pm, 4 October

   First published.

2. 3.42pm, 4 October

   Headline: Zionism is racism, Green Party says. The story opens on Israel's accusation of terrorism, prints the foreign ministry's statement twice, and says twice that Polanski's absence would have angered both sides.

3. 8.26pm, 4 October

   Headline: Israel: Green Party's anti-Zionist policy legitimises terrorism. The duplicate statement goes, Labour's Bridget Phillipson is added, and six paragraphs on a donor funding Labour's by-election campaign are added at the foot.

In the 8.26pm version the Telegraph gave the Israeli state 220 words, including both subheadings about the vote. It gave Labour, the Conservatives and Lord Austin 328, Green opponents and Jewish members who opposed the motion 199, and Lubna Speitan 50. It gave 367 words to other subjects: Polanski's record as leader, including his apology in May over a post about police officers at the Golders Green attack, and the donor. Supporters of every kind got 80 words.

Since 30 June 2026 the Telegraph has been owned by Axel Springer, which makes support for Israel a written condition of employment. We set out that ownership in who owns the news.

1. Daily Mail

   Puts a charge in quotation marks in its first sentence that nobody in the report made in those words.

   The first sentence says the Greens were branded the most anti-Semitic party in the UK, in quotation marks, with no speaker. The only person in the report who makes the charge, former deputy leader Shahrar Ali, says first openly anti-Semitic party, and so does the Mail's own headline.

2. Daily Mail

   Prints the same sentence twice.

   The sentence saying members backed a proposal to treat Israel like apartheid South Africa appears twice, ten sentences apart, almost word for word.

3. Daily Mail

   Leaves an accusation unattributed and a slur unanswered.

   It says the single-state clause was branded a plan to destroy Israel, without saying by whom, and prints an anonymous member calling the Greens an Islamist party with no reply.

4. HuffPost UK

   Calls a 55.7 per cent vote overwhelming.

   The motion passed 1,022 to 813. HuffPost's second sentence says activists voted overwhelmingly to back it.

5. The Telegraph

   Adds a word the motion does not use.

   The reporter writes that the motion called for the abolition of the state of Israel. The motion calls for one democratic state with equal rights for all. The Telegraph quotes that clause and stops before the equal rights.

6. National Post

   Adds a label to the agency's headline.

   The National Post ran AFP's report under a headline that opens with the word Leftist. AFP's own headline does not.

The National, in Glasgow, covered the same vote the same day. It quoted Lubna Speitan. It quoted Polanski on displacement and genocide. It quoted Rachel Millward, a deputy leader who opposed the motion and still pledged that the party would do everything in its power to stop the genocide. It printed the joint statement whole.

It still gave opponents more space than supporters, 210 words to 96, and it never printed the equal rights clause. It shows what every other report could have done that day. The campaigners behind the motion gathered to speak to the media after the vote; PA's own copy says so.

GB News printed the motion's definition, the right of return and the arms embargo, and quoted two supporters from the conference floor. The Telegraph and the Daily Mail printed neither the definition nor the right of return.

Every report, on every test in this piece. Each outlet name links to the report.

The Telegraph and the Daily Mail are members of the Independent Press Standards Organisation and are bound by its Editors' Code. Clause 1 of the Code separates an editor's choices from an editor's errors.

What the Code leaves to editors: whom to quote, how much, and in what order. Clause 1(iv) says the press is free to editorialise and campaign. The Code lets editors make every choice the word counts in this piece describe, and we report them as choices.

What the Code covers:

• Clause 1(i): the press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text. The Mail's first sentence puts in quotation marks a charge that nobody in its report made in those words.
• Clause 1(iv): the press must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact. The Telegraph states, as fact and in its reporter's voice, a definition of Zionism the motion rejects, and describes the motion as calling for abolition, a word the motion does not use.
• Clause 1(ii): a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence.

The BBC is bound by its own Editorial Guidelines, which require due accuracy and due impartiality. Leaving its own interviewee's words out of its report, and the genocide line out of a statement it chose to quote, are matters for its complaints process.

1. The Telegraph should take the word abolition out of its reporter's voice, print the motion's own definition of Zionism beside the one it states as fact, and print the single-state clause to its end, by Monday 12 October 2026, under Clause 1(ii).
2. The Daily Mail should correct its first sentence to the words Shahrar Ali used, and remove the sentence it printed twice, by the same date.
3. HuffPost UK should stop calling a 55.7 per cent vote overwhelming.
4. BBC News should add to its report the words Polanski used to the BBC, and the joint statement's sentence on genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and the illegal occupation.
5. Every outlet that quoted the single-state clause should print the words that follow it: equal rights for all, and the right of return for Palestinians and their descendants.

The members voted on a motion about Palestinians, and 13 of the 15 reports of that vote did not quote one.

Sources: BBC News, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Mirror, PA Media via ITV News, GB News, HuffPost UK, The National, Reuters, CNN, AFP and Euronews, 4 and 5 October 2026; Green Party of England and Wales, conference statement, 4 October 2026; Left Foot Forward, motion text and amendment votes, 4 October 2026; IPSO Editors' Code of Practice, Clause 1.