Free Palestine Party

Summary

Policies & Commentary

Back in the day when I was at uni, an election was held for our Student Representative Council. The usual mix were there – Labor, Liberal, Socialist Alternative, a few unaffiliated candidates – and one party with the enticing name of “Free Beer”. It claimed to be vaguely left-leaning, and laid on the alcohol at its events. The problem was, “Free Beer” was a shill for the Liberal Party, the name deliberately chosen to deceive student voters and capture their votes.

It worked. A majority Liberal SRC was elected – and our university went through a miserable year of cuts to certain student clubs, as well as the abolition of recycling programs, counselling for women who’d suffered sexual harassment or assault, and the queer collective. That SRC responded to criticism from me in an article by threatening to sue.¹Spoiler: they didn’t carry out their threat, after getting roundly called out by a student assembly.

So, when I found out that two known far-right conspiracy theorists, Monica Smit and Avi Yemini, were setting in motion a co-ordinated plan to register parties with deceptively progressive names and then funnel their votes to One Nation using Victoria’s Group Ticket Voting procedures, it was deja vu all over again.

The Free Palestine Party (hereafter referred to as FPP) is the brainchild of Avi Yemini, a serial pest who refers to himself as a “journalist” (it would be more accurate to call him an agitator) and who, in a video praising UK racist Tommy Robinson, described himself as “Australia’s proudest Jewish Nazi”.

Yemini is well-known for trying to pick fights with protesters who support trans rights, reproductive rights, and think public health is something to be protected. There are dozens of videos out there showing how he goads people to anger and then edits the encounter to show himself in the best possible light. This is the work of – to put it bluntly – a shit-stirrer, not a journalist. His sudden pivot to politics is no different.

Here he is, in his own words, describing how he intends to deceive what he calls useful idiots to harvest votes from people who are pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide.

There are a handful of “policies” listed on the FPP page, but I’m not going to waste your time by analysing them – because they are a smokescreen. Yemini, who has boasted of killing Palestinians while fighting for the IDF, is not in any way interested in supporting a people undergoing a genocide. He has not maintained any social media presence for this party apart from mentioning it from time to time on his personal X account or laughing about it in his videos.

Now that Victoria has abolished Group Vote Ticketing, FPP’s ostensible reason for existing has vanished. Nonetheless, it allegedly has five candidates running in this election – not that they found it necessary to mention this on their website. They are listed on the VEC website only.

I’ve spent probably more time on this than it deserves, but it is important that voters know exactly what FFP is. It’s a sham political party created with the sole purpose of deceiving people who care about the lives of those who are being slaughtered. It’s run by a self-described “Jewish Nazi” who has demonstrated nothing but contempt for voters.

Your vote is too important to waste on it.