RODNEY HIDE: Your $82,011 for a party that wants Israel gone

We know what would happen if Palestine were free "from the river to the sea".

We learnt it, to our horror, on October 7.

Hamas murdered some 1200 people that day and dragged 251 into Gaza. They killed, tortured, raped and mutilated. They filmed it. They gloried in it.

They weren't alone.

This wasn't a few extremists. It wasn't an aberration. Such is the power of a twisted and toxic ideology. It doesn't stop at the gunmen. It reaches the families, the neighbours and the crowds.

Israel's military estimates some 6000 Gazans crossed the fence that day. About 3800 were Hamas's elite Nukhba. The other 2200 were "terrorists and looters". The footage shows ordinary Gazans pouring through to grab what they could. And whom they could.

One terrorist rang home from Kibbutz Mefalsim on a murdered Jewish woman's phone. "Your son killed Jews!" he told his father. "With my own hands I killed 10!"

His father replied, "Allahu Akbar." In the transcript Israel released, his mother says: "I wish I was with you."

Shani Louk's near-naked body was paraded through Gaza on the back of a ute. The crowd cheered. Some spat on her. Youngsters were among them.

Sapir Cohen was taken into Gaza alive. "I saw thousands, thousands of people in the streets," she said. "They all encouraged the terrorists, and they come to touch me and to beat me."

The aunt of 12-year-old hostage Eitan Yahalomi says Gazan civilians beat him when he arrived.

Hostages weren't just held in tunnels. Three were kept for months in a family home in Nuseirat. The man of the house was the local doctor and imam.

And the polls? Two months after the massacre, 72% of Palestinians told the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research that Hamas's decision to attack was "correct". In the West Bank it was 82%.

That's not Israeli spin. That's a Palestinian pollster asking Palestinians.

Most told the same pollster they didn't believe Hamas committed the atrocities. They backed the attack anyway. Two years on, it's still a majority.

That's what "free Palestine" looked like the one day it got through the fence.

Now to New Zealand.

The Palestine Free from the River to the Sea Party is contesting our general election on 7 November. It's on your ballot paper as "Free Palestine".

Yes, our Electoral Commission registered it. It did so on 5 August, despite 207 submissions against. It ruled the name wasn't "offensive". It did draw the line at the party's logo, a Palestinian flag, in case voters got confused. The name was fine.

So a flag might mislead you. A party named for a slogan that wipes Israel off the map does not.

Auckland barrister Ian Dunwoodie complained to the Ombudsman. The Chief Ombudsman found the Commission's decision "not unreasonable".

And you're paying. The Commission has allocated the party $82,011 of taxpayers' money for election advertising on television, radio and online. Its leader, schoolteacher Paul Hopkinson, calls it "government funding of $82,000 to help raise awareness of the Palestinian cause".

What cause? The party tells us.

Its very first founding principle calls for "the dismantling of the Zionist structure of the state of Israel". It rejects two states. It wants a single state in Israel's place.

It pledges "unconditional and complete solidarity for the Palestinian resistance in all forms". The website adds "accordant with International Humanitarian Law". The party's launch statement didn't bother: "Unconditional support for all forms of Palestine resistance."

The only way to peace, it says, "is to put an end to the apartheid state of Israel". It signs off: "Resistance Until Victory!"

We saw the resistance on October 7.

So there it is. A party campaigning within New Zealand, in our election, at our expense, for the destruction of Israel.

And the Electoral Commission and the Ombudsman are okay with this.

What would happen if the Jewish people lost their homeland?

They would be wiped out. We know that from October 7. That's what happened to the Jews Hamas reached in a single day.

Maybe some could escape. But to where? Where would they be welcome? And would they be safe there?

Would they be safe here?

Our own Prime Minister has said New Zealand would arrest Israel's Prime Minister if he came here. "We believe in the international rules-based system, we support the ICC, and we would be obligated to do so," Christopher Luxon told reporters.

That's our welcome for the elected leader of the world's only Jewish state. Netanyahu has a country and an army. Imagine the Jew who has neither. What welcome would a Jewish refugee expect?

Meanwhile we have a party campaigning in New Zealand on one cause. It boasts it's "the only party in this election" taking it on. It's not about New Zealand. It's about Israel. Its fix is to end the Jewish state.

We know what follows. We saw it on October 7.

It's a policy that implies a second Holocaust.

And our Electoral Commission and Ombudsman are okay with this.

Rodney Hide is a former Minister and ACT Party leader