ZFA chief says royal commission will examine underlying issues
A federal court in Australia has discontinued, by consent, a Racial Discrimination Act case the Zionist Federation of Australia brought against former SBS newsreader Mary Kostakidis over two X posts she shared in January 2024. The federation’s complaint centered on Kostakidis sharing a video of a speech by the late Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah alongside the text: “The Israeli govt getting some of its own medicine. Israel has started something it can’t finish with this genocide.” A second post sharing the same video was also part of the claim. The court issued “no order as to costs.”
The federation’s chief executive, Alon Cassuto, said in a statement Friday that his objectives in filing had been “substantially satisfied” by a public apology Kostakidis had issued in 2025 for the “hurt, distress and pain” felt by Jews and Israelis in Australia who took her posts “as an edorsement [sic].”
The complaint was first raised with the Australian Human Rights Commission before being escalated to the federal court. Last year, Kostakidis asked the court to strike out the proceedings, arguing that the claim failed to identify which race, ethnicity or nationality was offended by her posts about Israel.
In her own statement Friday, Kostakidis said she had spent “two years doing nothing but preparing my defence in a case aimed at silencing me” and characterized the discontinuation as “a win for every Australian who values our democratic right to freedom of political expression.” She thanked “fellow Australians” who had supported her defence and added, “The purpose of journalism is to get to the truth – fearlessly – and to hold power to account. This is a win for press freedom, which has prevailed.” She also said: “Watching a people livestream their own genocide while the international community responsible for creating this mess offers the victims sympathy and the perpetrators bombs, diplomatic cover and impunity, has been disgusting.”
Cassuto said he had brought the matter to seek “recognition of the harm these posts caused ordinary Jewish Australians.” He added that “given everything Ms Kostakidis has chosen to publish since her apology, a further apology compelled by a court would ring hollow,” and that the issues underlying the proceeding would now be examined by Australia’s royal commission on antisemitism and social cohesion, with the commissioner’s report due in December.
Cassuto concluded: “Ms Kostakidis can make her own accounting of her conduct. The Australian public can make theirs. I do not intend to spend another year taking Ms Kostakidis’ repugnant commentary from the dark corners of the internet and giving it a federal court platform in her pursuit of martyrdom. My job here is done.”