Teal activist in bitter row with Jewish leaders

A former senior adviser to teal MP Zoe Daniel has a long history of attacking Jewish community leaders on social media.

Alexandra Fein

One of the teal movement’s most senior strategists has savaged key Jewish community figures for years and was locked in a toxic legal and social media dispute with a former colleague that included an intervention order being taken out against her.

Online activist Alex Fein was head of strategy for independent MP Zoe Daniel and is now the president of the teal campaign in the ultra-marginal, heavily Jewish Victorian seat of Caulfield, having been appointed to the roles after many years of left-wing activism.

Ms Fein has accused an Executive Council of Australian Jewry staff member of playing “footsies” with the far right and “happily entertaining paranoid right-wing fantasies”, another senior Jewish community leader of having “shit on the memory of the six million as he cowers in the face of actual Nazi activity” and the ECAJ of producing online content that is a “magnet for Holocaust deniers”.

Her expansive social media footprint focuses heavily on the ECAJ, which has declined to comment, but several other groups also have faced strident attacks.

She had offered to help the ECAJ but said the organisation would rather continue to fail than take up her offer.

“The fact that the ECAJ page is frequented by far more Nazis than Jews is testament to this.”

On the Australia Israel and Jewish Affairs Council’s position on terrorism, she wrote in 2018: “So far as I can tell, you have only spread the lie of the left being as dangerous as the right once.

“I would really like to think your organisation values good evidence, rigour, and accuracy sufficiently that you will not be making this mistake again.’’

Ms Fein is also critical on social media of the Anti-Defamation Commission.

She was banned from Facebook for 30 days in 2018 due to a spat with the Australian Jewish News over an allegedly defamatory social media post she made.

When banned, she wrote: “I have been banned for 30 days for exposing the bullying, intimidation and appalling journalism of the AJN. The AJN is fundamentally incapable of providing the necessary media checks and balances for our community.”

When Ms Fein was banned, her husband, Yaron Gottlieb – also a teal supporter – took over moderation of Jewish site Galus Australia Community, of which Ms Fein was heavily involved.

He posted on May 29, 2018: “Many of the little bitches that went crying to Facebook about the nasty woman being mean to them have been blocked and if you want to argue the toss on this one, just save yourself the trouble of having to think of something that will piss me off, tag me and I will gladly block you too.”

A senior Jewish leader, who declined to be named, said he was astonished the teals had backed Ms Fein as Caufield president when for years she had railed against key community figures.

 

Ms Fein will play a major role in the attempt to elect teal independent Nomi Kaltmann to the Liberal seat of Caulfield, which has a margin of just 0.1 per cent.

Ms Fein has posted extensively about an embarrassing run-in with the law in 2018, when a friend she was involved with in a charity sought an intervention order against her. Ms Fein told The Australian there was copious evidence demonstrating the intervention order was based on a false premise and that her lawyers had told her the intervention was deemed to be without foundation.

Police took out the intervention order, with court approval, between October 2, 2018, and December 19, 2018, after being told the alleged victim had endured an online campaign against her. It reads in part: “The protected person presented to Caulfield Police in seek (sic) of a personal safety intervention order as she is worried about the content the respondent is going to post online and the affect (sic) it will have on her mental health, the harm it will cause her. Police believe an order is (necessary) for the wellbeing and mental health of the affected person.”

While the order was later withdrawn, documents show Ms Fein then went on an online mission to explain her position, including lamenting a then rift with in-laws Rita and Jack Gottlieb. Ms Fein said in a December 19, 2018 post Ms Gottlieb did not support her in the dispute, over the way a Jewish-based charity was being run.

The Australian has chosen not to name the charity or person who obtained the intervention order. The alleged victim suffered mental health issues during the spat.

Ms Fein wrote: “My mother-in-law said I brought this horror on myself. I said to her that for as long as she refuses to acknowledge that a fraudulent (allegedly) report to the police was made about me, she cannot see my children.”

The order warns: “If you do not obey this order you may be arrested and charged with a criminal offence. A contravention of the order carries a maximum penalty of 240 penalty units and/or 2 years’ imprisonment.’’

The alleged victim emailed Ms Fein on December 7 that year, saying she had been hospitalised and did not have the energy to seek an extension to the order.

Ms Fein said the order was “demonstrably without foundation”.

“I wrote about problematic conduct and lack of governance at a charity. One of the people running that charity falsely told police that I was trying to harm her personally,” she said. “The magistrate was quite clear that should the case be continued, I would be in a position to pursue costs. The case was withdrawn. Any suggestion that there was any truth or substance to that (order) is demonstrably false and defamatory.”