I can understand why more than a dozen Labour MPs have reported the Green Party to Sussex Police and the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) over its ‘Zionism is racism’ policy. After all, this obnoxious policy denies Israel’s right to exist and effectively licenses anti-Jewish hatred in the UK.

In a public letter, the MPs, led by former Home Office minister Mike Tapp and Labour Friends of Israel chair Mark Sewards, have drawn particular attention to Green Party delegates chanting, ‘Say it loud, say it clear, Zionists aren’t welcome here’. They have asked the police to investigate whether ‘Zionist’ was being used in this context as a synonym for Jews, and therefore ‘to direct or encourage hostility towards Jewish people’.

Just as troubling was the fact that the conference cheerfully voted down an amendment to the motion that would have protected Jewish Greens who attend what are characterised as ‘Zionist synagogues’. As Tapp and his colleagues rightly note: ‘The rejected safeguard (amendment) is particularly relevant because it specifically concerned synagogues and Jewish communal organisations.’

Obviously, the coupling of the word ‘Zionist’ with ‘synagogues’ targets the essence of Jewishness. It also implicitly justifies viewing synagogues as legitimate targets for so-called anti-Zionist protest.

There’s no doubt that this is a vile policy, authored and supported by vile scumbags. It supports the annihilation of Israel, while throwing even Green Party members who attend synagogues to the anti-Semitic wolves. However, calling on the police and the EHRC to interfere in the policy deliberations of a political party is fundamentally wrong.

Short of inciting violence, citizens must have the right to express their views in accordance with their inclinations. As nauseating as the Greens’ display of anti-Jewish hatred was over the weekend, their right to express these sentiments must be respected in a democratic society.

Decent people will undoubtedly find it difficult to defend the Greens’ refusal to safeguard even their own Jewish colleagues. However, democracy does not exist merely to allow decent people to express decent views. Democracy must allow parties of all shades of opinion to argue their case and test out their ideas in public life. Once the police and the judiciary become the arbiters of what members of a political party can or cannot say, democracy is in serious trouble. It should be up to the electorate to decide the future of the Greens or any other political party. That means fighting and defeating the Green Party’s anti-democratic attitudes and anti-Semitic policies through the ballot box.

At present, the Green Party serves as a home for anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish activists. It has subordinated its classical environmentalist orientation to the outlook of Hamas and other Islamist movements. Subjecting the current Green Party to police or judicial proceedings will do little to undermine its Islamo-leftist support base. Nor will it protect Jewish people from the onslaught they face on a daily basis.

It is only through the mobilisation of freedom-loving and democratically minded people that the security of Jewish people can be ensured. If Tapp and his Labour colleagues want to fight anti-Semitism effectively, they should use their energies to get the Labour movement to take the plight of British Jews more seriously.

Neither the police nor the judiciary should be allowed to deny the right of a party to elaborate its views and decide its policies. As it happens, the Green Party has performed a valuable service. By codifying its venomous anti-Jewish sentiments in the form of this ‘Zionism is racism’ policy, it has given the lie to its claim that anti-Zionism has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. The Greenshirts prove that anti-Semitism can come in many different colours.

Defending the right of the state of Israel to exist and the right of British Jews to go about their everyday business safely is no less a sacred cause than standing up to the fascists in the 1930s and 1940s. We can only do that through freedom of speech, not censorship.

Frank Furedi is president of the Freedom and Sovereignty Initiative Europe.