Acclaimed Journalist Charged With ‘Anti-Semitism’
Mary Kostakidis, for years the face of television news in Australia as anchor of the SBS nightly broadcast, has been accused of supporting ethnic cleansing of Jews for two retweets about Israel’s war on Gaza, reports Joe Lauria.
For retweeting two tweets on X critical of Israel, famed Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis is facing charges of allegedly violating the country’s Racial Discrimination Act.
The complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission from Alon Cassuto, the CEO of the Zionist Federation of Australia, highlights just two Kostakidis retweets from January this year, both of which contain a video of a speech by Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah in which he allegedly called for the ethnic cleansing of Israel.
The complaint was levelled under Section 18C(1) of the Racial Discrimination Act, which says:
“it is unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if:
(a) the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and
(b) the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person or of some or all of the people in the group.”
Cassuto says Kostakidis should have made clear in her retweet of Nasrallah’s video that she did not agree or endorse it. He says Nasrallah was calling for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel.
In the retweeted video, the Hezbollah leader says: “Here, you don’t have future, and from the river to the sea, the land of Palestine is for the Palestinian people and for the Palestinian people only …”
Above that Nasrallah quote in the Censored Men retweet, Kostakidis wrote: “Israeli govt getting some of its own medicine. Israel has started something it can’t finish with this genocide.”
https://youtu.be/K0aEj8S1fl4
Cassuto told a press conference: “Those like Mary Kostakidis who have a status and a platform and a responsibility to lead, need to promote cohesion not division.”
Zionist Federation President Jeremy Leibler added: “Mary Kostakidis has misused her platform to spread ‘conspiracy theories’ to deny the use of sexual violence by Hamas on the 7th of October.”
However, Kostakidis cites in another retweet the conclusion of an exhaustive U.N. investigation that found no evidence of sexual violence by Hamas.
If the matter is not resolved at the Human Rights Commission the Zionist Federation could file civil charges in court. Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, however, ‘is drafting hate speech laws to include criminal rather than civil penalties,” The Australian newspaper reported in an article about the Kostakidis case.
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/08/28/acclaimed-journalist-charged-with-anti-semitism/