Broadcasting doyenne accused of anti-Jewish hate speech
Mary Kostakidis, a respected former newsreader and public face of the national multicultural broadcaster, SBS, is accused of misusing her public standing and social media following to share “extreme and hateful speech” against Jews.
In a complaint to be filed with the Australian Human Rights Commission, Zionist Federation of Australia chief executive Alon Cassuto alleges that Kostakidis breached racial discrimination laws by promoting a speech by Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, in which he said there was no place for Jews in Israel and the occupied territories.
Former SBS newsreader Mary Kostakidis, pictured in 2008, is accused of spreading hate speech.Credit: Adam Hollingworth
In his speech, Nasrallah said that if Jewish people wanted to feel secure, they should go to the United States or Britain. “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.”
Sharing a link to the speech on her social media account on January 4, Kostakidis declared: “The Israeli govt getting some of its own medicine. Israel has started something it can’t finish with this genocide.”
The post on X, formerly Twitter, is among more than 100 cited by the Zionist Federation that, it alleges, show a pattern of Kostakidis disseminating hateful material against Israelis and Jewish people.
Material seen by this masthead includes comments about the Zionist lobby exerting “toxic influence” over Australian media companies, and Britain’s House of Commons and Israel controlling the US military and Congress.
Kostakidis compared the war in Gaza to the extermination of Jews at Auschwitz and likened Israel to Nazis. She promoted conspiracy theories about convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein being a secret Mossad agent and Israel deliberately allowing the October 7 attacks to go ahead to secure a pretext for war. She is sceptical there was evidence of systematic rape by Hamas on October 7.
“Since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Mary Kostakidis has shared extreme propaganda with her 30,000 Twitter followers, including a Hamas pamphlet that sought to justify its sadistic massacre,” Cassuto said on Sunday.
“For the sake of the precious multicultural nation that we have, we must stand up against racial hatred, no matter who is being targeted and who is spreading it.”
Kostakidis defended her post on X about the Hezbollah leader.
“What are you saying, that we shouldn’t hear what the other side has to say?” she told this masthead. “The point of that tweet was to say that Israel is inviting an escalation, it’s inviting retribution because it is conducting a genocide.”
Cassuto’s legal team is led by Arnold Bloch Leibler’s Raphael Leibler and Leon Zwier.
The complaint against Kostakidis is the highest-profile case relating to the war on Gaza to come before the Human Rights Commission and will test the strength of the existing Racial Discrimination Act, which Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has promised to bolster.
Kostakidis spent nearly 20 years reading SBS’s weekday bulletin before a dispute in 2007 with management and her newly appointed co-host, Stan Grant, which culminated in her quitting and suing the broadcaster. She is a former chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation and has served on multiple government advisory boards.
Kostakidis in 2019 outside London’s Belmarsh Prison, where she went to support Julian Assange.Credit: John Davis
This masthead last week documented the phenomena of October 7 denial, where prominent pro-Palestinian supporters such as Kostakidis have sought to minimise, qualify and otherwise deny what Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups did when they attacked communities in southern Israel.
Kostakidis has not resiled from her comments about October 7 or the war in Gaza. In an email response to questions from this masthead last week, she defended each of her claims and maintained her scepticism that women were raped on October 7.
The Human Rights Commission complaint against Kostakidis is under Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, which makes it unlawful to publicly offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate a person or group on the basis of race, colour or national or ethnic origin.
This provision has been used previously by Jewish people and groups against Holocaust deniers.
Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler (left) and chief executive Alon Cassuto.Credit: Penny Stephens
A freedom of speech provision also contained in the act exempts artistic works, scientific debate and fair comment on matters of public interest. To make use of this defence, a respondent must demonstrate they acted in good faith.
Zionist Federation president Jeremy Leibler said Nasrallah’s speech was not a rallying call for equality or peace between Arab and Jewish people but rather, a call to ethnically cleanse 7 million Jews who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
“He lays bare what these words that are chanted on our streets mean to him, to Hamas and to Iran,” Leibler said. “Mary Kostakidis, for so long the trusted face of multicultural Australia ... misused her platform to share extreme and hateful speech with her 30,000 Twitter followers.”
Complaints under the Racial Discrimination Act’s Section 18C are civil proceedings that, if they proceed to court, can result in a fine.
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