Mary Kostakidis’ lawyers will ask the federal court to strike out the statement of claim filed by the Zionist Federation of Australia at the first hearing on Thursday of a racial discrimination claim against her.
The former SBS newsreader has been accused by the ZFA of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA), according to the statement of claim.
The claim released by the court said the breach came when Kostakidis shared on X a video of a speech by the late Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, on 4 January 2024 and added: “The Israeli govt getting some of its own medicine. Israel has started something it can’t finish with this genocide.” A second post sharing the same video on 13 January is also part of the claim.
The chief executive of the ZFA, Alon Cassuto, lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Commission last year but mediation failed and the claim has been escalated to the federal court.
Kostakidis’ lawyer Mark Davis, principal at XD Law, said the statement of claim is impossible for the defence to counter.
“We’ve invited them to re-format it and if they don’t do that, which they’re not indicating they will, then we’ll make it a strikeout application,” Davis said.
According to the statement of claim released by the court, Kostakidis breached section 18C of the RDA when, they allege, she “spread and endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theories” on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
In the speech, Nasrallah says Israel will never be welcome in the region. “Here you don’t have a future, from the river to the sea the land of Palestine is for the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian people only.”
Cassuto is seeking a declaration that two posts, in January 2024, breached section 18C. He is also seeking an apology and a corrective notice above the post.
The statement of claim says the 13 January post was “reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate and/or intimidate Jews and/or lsraelis” and the respondent made the 13 January post “because of the race or national or ethnic origin of lsraelis and/or Jews”.
Nasrallah was killed by Israel in September last year, months after the post.
Kostakidis is yet to file her defence in the case.
She has previously said that as a journalist she had a responsibility to inform the public of what was being said.
In 2011 Herald Sun journalist Andrew Bolt and the publisher of the Herald Sun were found to have breached section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act in the judgment Eatock v Bolt.
The judgment was based on two 2009 articles “It’s so hip to be black” and “White fellas in the black” which discussed so-called “fair-skinned Aboriginal people” choosing to identify as Aboriginal.
The Thursday hearing was vacated and has been listed for an interlocutory hearing on 29 July 2025.
