Zack Polanski has claimed that neither Israel nor any other country has a right to exist. The Telegraph has more.

The Green Party leader appeared to dismiss the belief that the Jewish state had a right to exist as “semantics”.

He also suggested that Britain did not have any inherent claim to exist, saying: “I don’t believe any country has a right to exist. People have a right to exist, the Israelis have a right to exist, the Palestinians have a right to exist.”

Polanski is facing growing scrutiny over the handling of antisemitism in his party after local election candidates were arrested last week on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred.

Some activists also used the Greens’ spring conference to claim that Zionism, the belief in the right of Jews to self-determination, should be classified as a “racist ideology”.

Last week, Polanski was condemned across the political spectrum for sharing a social media post criticising the police after officers kicked the Golders Green suspect in the head during his arrest. Two Jewish men were stabbed during last Wednesday’s attack in north London.

On Wednesday night, Polanski was asked during an interview with ITV’s Robert Peston whether he believed Israel had a right to exist.

Told by Peston that the question had “enormous importance in the Jewish community”, Polanski responded: “I don’t believe any country has a right to exist.

“People have a right to exist, the Israelis have a right to exist, the Palestinians have a right to exist. And I think it’s our role as a third country to make sure that there’s fairness and transparency and accountability about a peace process.

“I always think these semantics about whether a country has a right to exist actually just ends up in gatekeeping, which is partly how we ended up in this mess in the first place with the Balfour Declaration.”

The Balfour Declaration was signed in 1917 and led to British rule of Palestine, laying the foundations for the modern state of Israel. The Israeli state was officially established in 1948 in the wake of the Second World War under a partition plan drawn up by the US.

Polanski did not challenge Peston when he replied that the “implication” of his argument was that Britain had no right to exist either.

The Green leader also repeated his claim that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, despite the host questioning whether it was responsible for him to pre-judge a legal issue.

Of course, this implies Palestine has no right to exist either. Which kind of undermines the whole case for a Palestinian state.

Worth reading in full.