In a meeting of members Sunday in the UK the Green Party voted 54% in favor of designating support for the state of Israel as racism. Party leader Zack Polanski, who is Jewish, avoided that part of the party congress and didn’t vote. Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar declared Zack Polanski persona non grata in Israel anyway. The Israeli Government issued a statement calling the Green Party’s declaration anti-Semitic under IHRA’s definition because it denied the Jewish people the right to self-determination.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews issued a statement on the Green Party’s decision:

“This motion passed by the Green Party is an attack on the Jewish community. It is an antisemitic platform based on a grossly offensive distortion and erasure of Jewish experience and identity.”

Protests against and in favor of the declaration took place outside the party conference, as well a more general call for the Green Party to return to its roots, with signs reading “Less Hamas, more trees.”

Jews and Arabs are not considered a race anymore but ethno-linguistic groupings. In archaic race theory both groups are considered the offspring of Shem, the son of Noah, which gave rise to the word anti-Semitism, Shem represented as -Sem-.

Photo: PA

Update: Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Omani perpetrator was indoctrinated by radical Islamist ideology,

A flight from Abu Dabai to Tel Aviv was diverted to a Saudi Arabian airport after the co-pilot stabbed the pilot with a knife or axe and attempted to crash the airplane with a rapid descent of over 300 MPH with tail-spin towards the ground. The mostly Israeli passengers stormed the cockpit and with the help of additional air crew righted the plane and made an emergency landing in Tabuk in NW Saudi Arabia.

Passenger Miryam Shira Ohayon said the plane was “pretty much out of control” when the stabbing took place over Jordan.

“The co-pilot tried to murder the pilot and basically carry out a suicide attack on the plane,” she told reporters by speakerphone held up by her mother, who was waiting at Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv. “It was really on the way to crashing, and it was simply the resourcefulness of many people who took control of the co-pilot and neutralized him.”

“There was also a doctor who gave first aid, and people who treated both of them. Other than the pilot, there were no injuries, but the bigger fear was really a crash, which is exactly what he was trying to do,” Ohayon said.

Another passenger told the Jerusalem Post that intervening passengers shouted at two off-duty pilots at the back of the plane “to run and take control” of it, and one of them did so after the passengers managed to remove the attacker from the cockpit.

Israeli sources told the Post the would-be hijacker was an Omani national. There was no immediate confirmation of the details from Israeli or Saudi officials.

The airline confirmed said “all passengers and crew are safe and accounted for,” and it confirmed that two replacement aircraft had been deployed to Tabuk to “relieve the passengers and crew,” though many Israeli passengers told media outlets they would not reboard a FlyDubai plane. There were 174 people on board.

Full story here.