Tortured by Iran, trolled at home: academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert hits out at vicious attacks

Since walking free from Iran, Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert has faced a new trauma — ­vicious online trolling by a sacked professor.

Australian academic and former Iranian prisoner Kylie Moore-Gilbert in Melbourne on Friday. Picture: Aaron Francis

Since walking free from the hellhole of Iran’s brutal Evin Prison four months ago, Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert has had to face a new trauma — a ­vicious online trolling by sacked university professor Tim Anderson, who claims that she was an ­Israeli spy and helped organise “repeated terrorist murders”.

Dr Anderson, a far-left “anti-­imperialist” who once flew to Syria for an audience with President Bashar al Assad, has been prominent in pushing Tehran’s unsupported claims that Dr Moore-Gilbert was a Mossad agent and has posted propaganda videos that allege her “missions” included spying on the Iranian nuclear program.

But now Dr Moore-Gilbert has had enough.

The Melbourne University lecturer in Islamic Studies has hit back, labelling Dr Anderson an “Iran puppet and con­spiracy theory zealot” fired for “peddling the propaganda” of ­regimes such as Syrian President Bashar al Assad.

“He is clearly just a mouthpiece for these regimes,” Dr Moore-Gilbert told The Weekend Australian. “It’s not just him; there’s quite a few useful idiots in Western countries who are happy to do a deal with these guys.

“I honestly don’t see any logical explanation for his fixation on me, that months after my release he’s still tweeting about me the same propagandistic stuff that was released by the regime. He’s been told he has to promote that narrative and he’s doing his job.”

Dr Moore-Gilbert no longer sees the posts: she has blocked Dr Anderson, and some of his more aggressive followers.

The 33-year-old was released from jail late last year after being held in the notorious Evin Prison for more than two years on trumped-up charges of spying.

Dr Anderson, a political economy lecturer, was sacked by Sydney University in 2019 after a series of misconduct findings that included posting an image that featured a Nazi swastika super­imposed on the Israeli flag and sharing a photograph of one of his PhD students wearing a badge that said “death to Israel” and “curse the Jews”.

Dr Anderson may be an outlier in academia, and even on the radical left, but he has more than 30,000 Twitter followers. He describes himself as director of the Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies and says he was “sacked from the University of Sydney for offending Israeli killers”.

He is appealing his dismissal in the Federal Court in what’s set to become a test case on the limits of academic freedom. His appeal is backed by the National Tertiary Education Union, which argues “cancel culture” led to his axing.

Dr Moore-Gilbert doesn’t buy it. “I think in all universities it’s a fireable offence,” she said. “I mean, if you ­replaced comments about Jews with comments about any other minority group — Muslims, African-Australians, homosexual people — there would be a huge outcry about it.

“I don’t see why making anti-Semitic remarks should be any ­different. It’s a violation of the university’s policies and he’s violating his employment contract by making such remarks and therefore, as would I or any academic, should expect that they would take disciplinary action against you.

“We are, as academics, tasked with conducting research and teaching that is informed by data, and informed by the facts, and the kind of narratives that this guy’s promoting do not at all appear to me to be informed by any research basis or factual basis that an academic would be speaking from.”

Dr Moore-Gilbert finds it difficult to reconcile Dr Anderson’s ­demands for unfettered freedom of speech for himself, with his championing of a tyrant like President Assad who imprisons and kills his political opponents.

“It’s completely hypocritical; I don’t think he has any credibility whatsoever, either as an academic or as an independent commentator or whatever he’s trying to set himself up as,” she said.

“He flew to Damascus for a photo op with Bashar Al Assad at the same time Assad was bombing his own civilian population with chemical weapons — that’s a bit of a scandalous thing for an academic to do.”

After Scott Morrison hosted Dr Moore-Gilbert at Kirribilli House last month, and she thanked him for his help, Dr Anderson tweeted: “Australia’s PM Scott Morrison hosts Israeli zealot Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert. Where are the ­foreign influence laws?”

But in a stinging repost, Dr Moore-Gilbert flung Dr Anderson’s words back at him, tweeting: “Syrian President Bashar Assad hosts Iran puppet and conspiracy zealot Dr Tim Anderson fired by @Sydney Uni for peddling these regimes’ propaganda and other odious views. Where are the ­foreign influence laws?”

Dr Anderson, however, has continued his attacks.

“Prior to her missions in Israel (vetting Iranian defectors), Syria and Israel, Kylie Moore-Gilbert presented as pseudo neutral in the Middle East hothouse,” he wrote last week. “But scratch the surface and she is as fanatically anti-Syrian and anti-Iranian as any other Zionist.”

It’s a charge that Dr Moore-Gilbert vehemently rejects.

“On what basis is he actually making this claim? I’m neither anti-Syrian nor anti-Iranian, nor am I a Zionist,” she said. “I’m very sympathetic towards Iran. I love Iran very much. It breaks my heart I can’t return there. I am very connected to the Iranian people; I’m talking to multiple friends in Iran on a daily basis.

“This claim that I’m some sort of evil Zionist is just bizarre because actually, you know, anybody who knows me would know I’ve been very critical of the Israeli government and I’m not an Israeli, I’ve never been employed by Israel — I’ve never worked in Israel.”

After a recent interview Dr Moore-Gilbert conducted with Sky News, Dr Anderson accused the “Murdoch media” of being part of a conspiracy to “stick with the ‘innocent abroad’ story so as to keep promoting war with Iran”.

Suggesting Dr Moore-Gilbert had done “military and leadership training in Israel”, he said Sky had “helped cover up the contribution of Israeli agents to a wave of assassinations and terrorism against the people of Iran”. In one tweet, he said he was glad Dr Moore-Gilbert had been released but then declared “her links to Israel should not be covered up”, and he linked to an article he claimed “tells of her leadership training in one of the ­illegal colonies in the occupied West Bank of Palestine”.

But the linked article says nothing about “leadership” or “training”; those words are an invention by Dr Anderson.

The words used in the ­article to describe the summer program Dr Moore-Gilbert attended are an “exploration of classic Jewish texts and seminal Zionist thinkers, lectures from prominent Israeli intellectuals and public figures, field trips to historic sites, and inter­action with Israeli peers”.

It was at that camp that Dr Moore-Gilbert was photographed with four other women, all wearing khaki jackets — an image that became Exhibit 1 in Iran’s bid to convince the world that she had undergone military training.

“Has anybody actually seen what an Israeli military uniform looks like?” she asked, exasperated. “If I was a soldier in the Israeli Defence Forces I would be wearing an IDF uniform not just a random old crappy khaki jacket. And surely, if I was trained in some top secret spying facility, there wouldn’t be pictures of that on ­social media. You know, I mean that’s bonkers!”

One thing she would like to clear up: the camp was held in a West Bank settlement but she said she was against the settlements.

“I mean, actually during this program I was one of the more vocal participants challenging the hosts about the fact that it’s being held in a settlement. I was calling it out. I was in favour of a two-state solution. I was in favour of Israelis withdrawing from settlements, handing them to the Palestinians.

“For me it’s quite upsetting to be called a Zionist and some sort of hardcore, pro-Israel fan girl when actually I have a very moderate view of both sides.”

Dr Anderson told The Weekend Australian he was not trolling Dr Moore-Gilbert, but was tweeting about her “because the corporate media, including The Aust­ralian, have been making this false argument there was no evidence about her being recruited by Israel — that’s not true at all”, he said.

“Iran has posted a substantial video which has been posted on a number of sites, citing the evidence about her receiving military and leadership training in Israel.”

Asked for details of this evidence, Dr Anderson could only point to a 6½-minute video aired on Iranian television.

“The Iranians said they had evidence she was involved in vetting Iranian dissidents who came to ­Israel to check if they were OK. So they refer to a number of things which presumably they have evidence about her links with Israel.”

Told that Dr Moore-Gilbert emphatically denies being a Zionist, Dr Anderson replied: “Well she speaks like one.”

Dr Moore-Gilbert is absorbed in the task of writing a book about her experiences in Iran, but even now, back at home in Melbourne, she doesn’t feel entirely safe.

“My address is known to the Iranian regime … so presumably it’s known to whatever operatives they have in Australia,” she said.

“But I don’t want to live my life in fear. I don’t think that I’m necessarily in danger at the ­moment — it wouldn’t be good for them to do anything to me here in Australia.”