Asia Pacific Report
The Free Palestine Party has criticised the NZ Electoral Commission for failing to take any action against what it says has been an NZME ban on key campaign messages from the party.
NZME reportedly refused to broadcast any of the Free Palestine Party’s advertisements on its ZB radio network.
NZME also refused to carry any campaign material with the wording “From the River to the Sea” in reference to expelled Palestinians’ right to return to their homeland.
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In a statement, Free Palestine Party president Paul Hopkinson said the party had been established for the 2026 election, “not to get votes, but instead to have people vote for the political party with the best policies in support of Palestinian rights”.
“We aimed to raise public awareness of the most fundamental rights of Palestinians and how the current government was ignoring these rights and the news media never reported on them,” he said.
“That’s why we called ourselves, ‘The Free Palestine from the River to the Sea Party.”
Hopkinson said UN Resolution 194 had been passed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, which demanded Israel to allow the 750,000 Palestinians it had just expelled from their homes in Palestine to return.
Right of Return vital
“That Right of Return applies to all of the Mandate Palestine, from the River to the Sea. But NZME, and by extension the Electoral Commission when we appealed to them, wouldn’t allow us to use that expression,” Hopkinson said.
“We are only allowed to describe Palestinians’ rights within the accepted and highly restricted self-serving framework of the Zionist-Front NZ Jewish Council.”
“We are not permitted to describe a right of return which every government of New Zealand has voted to endorse in the United Nations every year since 1948.”
“And this is just because some sympathisers of genocidal Israel, use a ‘hecklers’ veto’ on NZME and the Electoral Commission, when they claim they are ‘upset’ to hear a geographically correct description of Palestine”.
