It has become almost customary for Palestinians, whenever we speak about Palestine, to begin by telling the story of our suffering. We are expected to explain how we became refugees, how our parents and grandparents were displaced, and which members of our families were killed, imprisoned or disappeared under Israeli occupation.
We are expected to expose our deepest wounds, relive generations of trauma, and to offer our grief as evidence that our demands for justice deserve to be heard.
This is nothing but emotional labour.
And today, I refuse to audition for anyone’s sympathy.
I refuse to bare my wounds for the world to see, simply to validate the decisions and actions we take on the path towards our liberation.
Palestinian rights are not conditional upon our ability to move an audience to tears.
This is why when Green Party members voted to adopt the historic motion declaring Zionism to be racism and calling for a free Palestine from the river to the sea, it felt like a historic movement in UK solidarity efforts.
As a Palestinian and a Green Party member who co-authored and helped develop and advance this motion, I saw this as more than a political victory. It was also an affirmation that Palestinian voices could shape the policies of a major British political party without having to surrender their own understanding of their oppression or dilute their demands to be palatable.
Yet what should have been a moment of collective reflection and celebration quickly became overshadowed by opposition from several Green Party MPs and figures within the party leadership.
A democratic victory that some refuse to accept
The motion did not emerge overnight. Outsiders did not impose it, nor was it the product of some mysterious group of extremists, as some have suggested.
It was drafted and championed by ordinary Green Party members, including Palestinians and anti-Zionist Jews, who spent months organising workshops, seminars, discussions and fringe events to engage fellow members.
Even after the motion was denied a hearing following procedural delays and filibustering during the party’s spring conference, we continued organising, discussing and engaging.
We believed in the Green Party’s commitment to grassroots democracy, even when its procedures appeared to work against us.
Nevertheless, once the motion finally passed, some elected representatives responded not by acknowledging the democratic outcome, but by questioning the motivations of those who brought the motion forward, portraying our organisation and determination as something threatening.
MP Ellie Chowns called for protecting the party from extremists and entryists.
Ironically, only months earlier, party leadership was enthusiastically celebrating a remarkable surge in membership.
Apparently, welcoming new members is something to celebrate until those members organise, exercise their democratic rights and successfully influence party policy.
Even my own MP, Sian Berry, whom I personally contacted to engage with the motion and its arguments, did not respond. Yet, once the media attacks started, Berry weighed in by publicly distancing herself from the motion, describing it as seriously flawed and accusing its Palestinian proposers of being unwilling to compromise.
She has even called on the party to revisit a decision reached through its own democratic processes.
MP Adrian Ramsay, the party's former co-leader, has publicly encouraged Green council groups to distance themselves from the democratically adopted policy. In a recent public statement
Ramsay praised council groups that rejected the motion, described the conference decision as a distraction from their work, and said it did not reflect the views of most party members.
It is deeply disappointing to see a former party leader effectively encouraging a division between elected council groups and the democratic decisions of the party’s own membership.
Selective silencing
Whilst disagreement is a legitimate part of political life, actively encouraging local representatives to distance themselves from a policy adopted through the party’s highest democratic forum raises serious questions about whose voices are ultimately respected.
What message does this send to party members who invest their time, energy and conviction in the democratic process, only to see its outcome publicly undermined by those elected to represent them?
What makes this particularly painful is that these Green MPs are now among the most vocal opponents of a motion written by Palestinians, for Palestinians, and supported through the party’s democratic process.
Not long ago, Palestinians within the Green Party extended a gesture of solidarity and goodwill to those very MPs. After Israeli authorities imposed entry bans on them, we sent a letter replacing that exclusion with an invitation to visit a Free Palestine, to stand alongside us and to hear directly from Palestinians about our aspirations for freedom, dignity and self-determination.
It was an invitation to listen, to engage and to recognise that Palestinians are not merely subjects of political debate, but people with voices, histories and a right to determine their own future. Judging by some of the responses to the motion, it feels like the invitation was buried under a pile of political calculations and selective solidarity.
Palestinians are also not the only ones who’ve been silenced by opposing MPs and the subsequent media storm.
A leading accusation against the motion is that it threatens the safety of Jewish members of the Green Party. But Jewish safety is not at risk from a motion that defines and confronts Zionism as a settler colonial ideology, examining its historical and contemporary manifestations, and reaffirming the Palestinian struggle for liberation, including ending occupation and confronting the structures of displacement and dispossession.
Not only is this argument, which conflates Zionist views with Jewish identity, antisemitic in itself, but it also completely ignores anti-Zionist Jewish members. Many of those members participated in drafting the motion and organising discussions and public meetings in support of it, but opponents have shown they’re not interested in this part of the story.
No one’s safety should ever come at the expense of another people’s freedom, dignity or right to self-determination.
Amro Tabari is a British Palestinian renewable energy engineer, activist and writer. Born a refugee in Syria and raised in Jordan, his family originates from Tiberias, Palestine. He has lived in the UK since 2014 and is actively involved in grassroots campaigns for Palestinian liberation, social justice and environmental sustainability. A member of the Green Party and Greens for Palestine, he was recognised as one of The Big Issue’s 100 Changemakers in 2026 for his work in politics and activism.
Follow Amro on Instagram: @amro_tabari
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