Polanski responds to Guardian’s ‘zealously pro-Palestine’ jibe

Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff has published a piece tracking the rise of the Greens. While the piece isn’t completely negative, it does contain moments like the following:

“zealously pro Palestinian party.”

Genocide is bad actually. https://t.co/ucW5gre0j7

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) November 11, 2025

Zealots

The questionable sentence in Hinsliff’s piece was this:

His party conference speech, responding as the Jewish leader of a zealously pro-Palestinian party to a Manchester synagogue stabbing which had happened only hours earlier, was strikingly deft and thoughtful for a relative novice.

While the word ‘zealous’ is a synonym of ‘enthusiastic’, it’s generally used to describe a level of fanaticism which is dogmatic beyond reason. You might think ‘words don’t matter‘, but this isn’t an opinion held by the editors of major newspapers, and when they use a word like ‘zealous’ they’re using it deliberately.

Another reason to draw attention to this stuff is that the Guardian have put out some dodgy reporting on Israel’s genocide. The following was from the ceasefire earlier this year, and as you can see they suggested Israel was honouring the ceasefire while simultaneously carrying out airstrikes:

@guardian are you seriously suggesting a 2 year old and a 3 year old were legit military targets who breaking the “ceasefire”? https://t.co/09qjeZ6HL6

— #ReadyForTheRevolution (@allibee87) March 16, 2025

This reporting is the sort of thing that we’d describe as ‘zealous’, because it enthusiastically defends Israel’s position despite all available evidence.

Declassified, meanwhile, reported this:

Did you know?

BBC and Guardian editors held private meetings with an Israeli general one month into the Gaza genocide.

Watch how we exposed this story👇https://t.co/MhNwNAdQWn

— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) March 15, 2025

Dreadful reporting from supposedly progressive outlets isn’t unique to the Guardian, of course. As we reported, 150 New York Times contributors have pledged to cease working with the outlet until they end their bias against Palestinians. The letter stated:

Until The New York Times takes accountability for its biased coverage and commits to truthfully and ethically reporting on the US-Israeli war on Gaza, any putative ‘challenge’ to the newsroom or the editorial board in the form of a first-person essay is, in effect, permission to continue this malpractice

Only by withholding our labor can we mount an effective challenge to the hegemonic authority that the Times has long used to launder the US and Israel’s lies

As of this week, Mondoweiss say the number of signatories is more like 500.

‘Staggering’

In the same paragraph as the above, Hinsliff wrote:

Like Farage before him, Polanski is staggeringly underqualified for Downing Street – the highest elected office he has held is on the London Assembly – but he has the storytelling skills and creative political imagination that the more obviously qualified Keir Starmer lacks.

Presumably she’s saying that the route to becoming qualified is this:

• → MP.
• →→ Minister.
• →→→ Secretary of State.
• →→→→ PM.

The problem is that we’ve had many PMs who followed this exact trajectory, and they’ve all been terrible.

Boris Johnson, anyone?

Liz Truss?

.@gabyhinsliff claims you’re “staggeringly underqualified for Downing Street” yet says Sir Keir Starmer is “obviously qualified”.

But @Keir_Starmer is doing terribly & now one of the most hated men in the country.

Time we took a risk on the “staggeringly underqualified”. 👍

— James Foster (@JamesEFoster) November 11, 2025

We’re not arguing we need individuals with no experience, but clearly the sort of experience you pick up in Westminster isn’t always positive (and we could say the same about the elite universities these people attend).

Beyond this, all the experience in the world won’t mean anything if a person has no moral compass. You can moan about ‘student politics’ all you like, but when politicians genuinely don’t care about the people, they will always put their own interests over that of the public.

Much like with the ‘zealous‘ line, ‘staggeringly underqualified‘ betrays the fact that the Guardian are much more in line with Britain’s political consensus than they’d have you believe.

Featured image via Barold