Racial discrimination proceedings brought by the head of the Zionist Federation of Australia were “part of a deliberate campaign to undermine and discredit” Mary Kostakidis, court documents claim.
The former SBS newsreader has been accused by the ZFA of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act by sharing two X posts about a speech by the late Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah in January 2024.
The chief executive of the ZFA, Alon Cassuto, complained to the Australian Human Rights Commission but the matter was not resolved and was escalated to the federal court.
Cassuto’s claim says the breach came when Kostakidis shared on 4 January a video of a speech by Nasrallah 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. That post, which was reshared from another account, quoted from Nasrallah’s speech, saying: “Nasrallah’s message to Israelis: ‘If you want to be secure and safe, you have a US passport, go back to the US. You have a British passport, go back to the UK. Here you don’t have a future. From the river to the sea, the land of Palestine is for the Palestinian people only.’”
In her defence, filed in the federal court on Friday, the journalist and commentator claims the “proceeding has been instituted as part of a deliberate campaign to undermine and discredit the Respondent, a prominent Australian who, since 7 October 2023, has questioned and been critical of the conduct of the State of Israel in order to cause a chilling effect on her and others in relation to the same”.
In an amended statement of claim filed in October, Cassuto claimed a vast majority of Jewish Australians consider themselves to be Zionist and feel a personal connection to the state of Israel, and that the 13 January post was likely to offend Jewish Australians and/or Israeli Australians.
Cassuto was asked to file the amended claim after Kostakidis submitted that the Racial Discrimination Act claim was so imprecise and ambiguous about Jewish people and citizens of Israel it could include “Arab ethnicity in the case of an Arab person who follows the Jewish faith” or “a Jewish person who is ethnically Swedish”.
In her defence, Kostakidis claims the term “‘Zionist’ is not defined and may bear a range of meanings”, and that “Zionism is a political philosophy or ideology and not a race or an ethnic group”.
She submitted that parts of Cassuto’s claim were “embarrassing” in that they were not based in material fact.
Cassuto said he was “offended and insulted” by the 4 January post – a submission Kostakidis disputed, arguing he did not complain about either of the posts until 14 July 2024, nor did he ask for either of the posts to be removed. Further, she argued, not only did he not file his complaint with the commission until six months later, but the ZFA held a press conference before filing the complaint.
“If … the Applicant felt offended and insulted by the post, that reaction was extreme or atypical and should be disregarded,” the defence documents state.
Kostakidis submits the 4 January post was a fair comment on a matter of public interest and was an expression of a genuine belief, and denies her 13 January post was made because of the race or national or ethnic origin of Jewish Australians.
The parties are scheduled to have a case management hearing before Justice Andrew McDonald on 18 December in the federal court in Melbourne.
