British Jews voiced fears as extremist parties on opposite sides of the political spectrum made major gains in local elections across the United Kingdom as results were announced Friday and Saturday, bringing into office a host of candidates who have espoused a range of antisemitic hate speech and anti-Israel conspiracy theories.

Both anti-immigrant Reform UK and the far-left anti-Israel Green Party surged in Thursday’s election, pushing aside the more traditional Labour and Conservative parties at a time when Jews in the UK are under increasing threat.

The Green Party’s Jewish leader, Zack Polanski, focused much of his campaign on opposition to Israel and accused UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer of being on a “Zionist” payroll.

Polanski’s party has been embroiled in a string of antisemitic scandals, with many Green candidates posting antisemitic and anti-Israel screeds on social media.

The populist Reform UK party of Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage garnered 1,442 council seats and control of 14 councils, BBC reported. The Green Party gained 374 seats and control of 4 councils, and also won 2 mayoral elections.

Labour and Conservatives lost 1,406 and 557 seats, respectively.

In the mayoral race for the northern London borough of Hackney, which has some 30,000 ultra-Orthodox Jewish residents, Green Party candidate Zoe Garbett won the seat after 24 years of Labour holding the city, The Jewish Chronicle reported.

Garbett thanked her voters during her victory speech, claiming they are “sick of politicians… supporting genocide,” a reference to widespread accusations that Israel committed genocide in its war against Hamas in Gaza.

During her time as a city councillor, Garbett supported a motion calling to cut ties with Israel, saying “I want to be really clear what we are talking about… a genocide, apartheid, a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people.”

In March, the Green Party failed to pass a motion to change party policy to equate Zionism with racism at its spring conference.

Israel has repeatedly and vociferously denied allegations of genocide in Gaza.

Several Green Party councillor candidates who have posted extremist social media posts were also elected in Hackney.

One of the candidates, Ifhat Shaheen described Hamas atrocities on October 7, 2023 as Palestinians trying to “defend themselves.”

4. The trouble with the Green party’s Ifhat Shaheen | The Spectator https://t.co/TTJtZN5S8n Advertisement if(typeof rgb_remove_toi_dfp_banner != "function" || !rgb_remove_toi_dfp_banner("#Article_Incontent2")){ window.tude = window.tude || { cmd: [] }; tude.cmd.push(function() {........

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