Jewish leaders file vilification complaints to AHRC against Sydney clerics

The country’s peak Jewish body has formally taken two Sydney clerics to Australia’s human-rights body, lodging vilification complaints against sermons that described Jews as ‘monsters’, ‘rats’, ‘bloodthirsty’ and ‘vile’.

Abu Ousayd, also known as Wissam Haddad, a Sydney-based Islamic cleric, who recited parables calling for the killing of Jews.

The country’s peak Jewish body has formally lodged vilification complaints with Australia’s human rights body against two Sydney Muslim clerics, after they gave sermons that described Jews as “monsters”, “rats”, “bloodthirsty” and “vile”.

The sermons also included parables about killing Jews and how if people “spat” on Israel “the Jews would drown”, among anti-Semitic tropes about them having “hands everywhere in business” and “owning the majority of banks”.

The Australian can reveal the Executive Council of Australian Jewry has lodged vilification complaints to the Australian Human Rights Commission against cleric Abu Ousayd, also known as Wissam Haddad, and sheik Ahmed Zoud, for a December sermon at southwest Sydney’s As-Sunnah Mosque.

The complaint – lodged by ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim and deputy president Robert Goot SC – also includes Mr Ousayd’s Al Madina Dawah Centre and As-Sunnah’s trading company, Awqaf Australia.

Mr Wertheim said the ECAJ had been left with no other option.

Abu Ousayd in front of the Al Madina Dawah Centre in Bankstown. Picture: Justin Lloyd

“We’re taking this action not only to defend the honour of our community but to protect the future of Australia as a peaceful and cohesive society,” he said.

The ECAJ will seek, among other things, that the AHRC order the sermons be removed from the internet, and that the clerics issue a public apology and provide “binding commitments” that they don’t engage in similar conduct. The ECAJ hasn’t ruled out further action against other preachers.

Mr Wertheim lamented NSW Police’s inability to lay charges against the clerics, saying citizens shouldn’t be forced to take on hate speech alone.

“It’s regrettable that governments and law enforcement agencies have failed to show proper leadership to enforce this rule, and that it has fallen to our community to stand up to hatemongers,” he said. “We will do this regardless of the human and financial cost. The issue is simply too important for Australia’s future.”

Mr Ousayd ran the now-defunct Al-Risalah Islamic Centre, frequented by numerous men who went on to become high-profile terrorists, and previously boasted of his friendship with terrorists Khaled Sharrouf and Mohamed Elomar.

The Al Madina Dawah Centre hosted other clerics who gave hate-fuelled sermons, including “Brother Ismail”, who said jihad was the “solution”, and “Brother Muhammad”, who called it the “final solution”. Neither are part of the ECAJ’s complaint.

Sheikh Ahmed Zoud gave a sermon at Lakemba's As-Sunnah mosque on December 22 where he called Jews "bloodthirsty monsters".

Mr Wertheim said Australia was a “wonderful home” to a diverse quilt of faiths and ethnicities, but the hatred contained in the sermons threatened its seams.

“For the most part, we all live together in harmony with mutual respect where everyone is free to observe their faith,” he said.

“One of the rules of Australian multicultural society is that we don’t bring the hatreds, prejudices and bigotry of overseas conflicts into Australia.”

The ECAJ has had success at the AHRC. In 2000, it successfully brought a case to the commission, which determined that Holocaust denialist Fredrick Töben had contravened the Racial Discrimination Act by publishing material that racially vilified Jewish people, as well as another successful complaint against former Tasmanian schoolteacher Olga Scully in 2001.

The Australian revealed how, since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war, multiple clerics in Sydney’s southwest had given incendiary sermons.

ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim. Picture: John Feder

ECAJ deputy president Robert Goot SC.

Mr Ousayd said Jews were “descendants of pigs and monkeys”, that New Year’s Eve was a “celebration of foreskin”, and that Israelis and Jews were “stealing organs”. “If all the Muslims in the Middle East spat on Israel … the Jews would drown,” he said in an October 21 sermon.

In Sheik Zoud’s December sermon he referred to Jews as “monsters” and “terrorists”, and said the “characteristics” of “most Jews” were that they were “thirsty for bloodshed” and treacherous.

“The cowards fell before the attacks of the mujahideen … (they ran) like rats,” he said in Arabic.

In November, Muslim community leader Dr Jamal Rifi said the sermons at the Al Madina Dawah Centre did not speak for or reflect the wider southwest Sydney Muslim community, saying anti-Semitism and Islamophobia should “never be tolerated”.

The complaints were made under the Racial Discrimination Act’s Part 11A, a civil provision, which prohibits “offensive behaviour based on racial hatred”, enclosed in section 18c.

The Australian has reported on the inability of authorities to clamp down on the hate speech and lay charges.

NSW Premier Chris Minns referred 93z to the Law Reform Commission. Picture: Nikki Short

Section 93z of the NSW Crimes Act outlaws inciting violence on the grounds of race or religion. The section is being reviewed by the Law Reform Commission at the request of the Minns government, and no successful prosecution has been brought under the Act. It was “streamlined” in November so police could lay charges without approval from the Director of Public Prosecutions.

NSW Upper House deputy president Rod Roberts said he was “disappointed and concerned” that it had been left to Jewish leaders to stand up to hate speech.

“This (penalising hate speech) is the role of the government via the police... this hateful rhetoric is well documented,” he said.

Mr Roberts said that there had been calls to improve 93z “for some time” and that police had said existing legislation was “not fit for purpose”.

“It’s imperative the government makes the legislation effective and enforceable,” he said.

Separately, The Australian revealed how Liberal MP Julian Leeser criticised the AHRC for not doing enough to combat anti-Semitism in the wake of October 7 and that it had an ongoing contract with the company of Elsa Tuet-Rosenberg, one of a group who led the dissemination of the details of hundreds of doxxed Jewish creatives in February.