At-large City Council candidate Grace Ross, the former Green-Rainbow Party nominee for governor, must change her positions on Darfur and Israel before local Jewish leaders withdraw their criticism of her, a prominent Jewish leader said yesterday.

While Ms. Ross said her discussions with the Jewish activists earlier this week have opened a dialogue, she declined to say if she has changed her stance on whether genocide is occurring in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Many Jews and progressive activists, as well as the Bush administration, hold the view that the violence is clearly genocide. In Massachusetts, liberal Democrats such as state Sen. Edward M. Augustus Jr. and Jewish lawmakers including Sen. Harriette L. Chandler, both of Worcester, have proposed legislation calling for the state to divest itself of its investments in Sudan.

The official Green-Rainbow position is that the violence in the northern African country is caused by several factors, but that calling it genocide is an anti-Arab racist mischaracterization.

Ms. Ross also did not say if she has modified her views on Israel, and Israel’s strikes against the Hezbollah political and paramilitary organization in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. But she tried to distance herself from a position paper she wrote during the Israel-Hezbollah conflict that likened the Jewish people to victims of battering who have themselves become batterers, saying, “I would never say Jews are batterers.”...

...Among others, the local firefighters union and Central Massachusetts AFL-CIO are supporting her.

I mean, "GREEN" party always scored the "identify with the environment, eco-friendliness, save the Earth" types of things for me. Martin Solomon's blog entry (linked aboved) about the local leaders of the Massachusetts Green Party, however, is truly a reality adjustment for me.