The conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is the test in the Zionist lobby case against Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis for her Gaza reporting and the outcome will be of great international significance, says Joe Lauria.
The above is an address by Consortium News Editor Joe Lauria, part of a program in Sydney, Australia on Saturday about the case of a prominent journalist being brought to court by a Zionist lobbying group for alleged racial hatred against Jews because of her social media reporting on Gaza. 4 min., 12 sec. The transcript follows.
I‘m speaking from just outside Washington. I remotely watched the entire hearing last week in the case of the Zionist Federation of Australia vs Mary Kostakidis. You can read my account on Consortium News. It was also republished by Pearls and Irritations.
I want to make just a few points about this case.
First, I know Mary Kostakidis. Like anyone who knows her the idea that she is a bigot, or a racist or an anti-Semite is just totally absurd. The idea that she should wind up in a courtroom before a judge on a charge of violating the country’s Racial Discrimination Act is unfathomable. But then we must consider the upside-down period we’re living through.
It could not be more obvious what is going on here. Mary Kostakidis is opposing a genocide, what any decent person should be doing. But the government that is perpetrating that genocide has activated its “cells” around the world – these cells include powerful governments, intelligence agencies, law enforcement, influential mainstream media, online influencers and lobbyists, like the Zionist Federation of Australia – to punish anyone who is trying to stop Israel from committing its crimes.
That includes American university students getting clubbed over the head by riot cops; German anti-genocide protestors beating beaten in the streets of Berlin by police; the Palestine Action group being designated a terrorist organization by the British Home Secretary; British journalists and activists being interrogated at the U.K. border and threatened with prosecution under the Terrorism Act, the ABC sacking Antoinette Lattouf and the Zionist Federation of Australia‘s action against Mary Kostakidis.
The central issue in her case will be whether criticizing Israel is equal to anti-semitic hatred. Mary’s barrister rightly focused last week on the July 1 case of Wertheim v. Haddad, in which Justice Angus Stewart ruled that:
“ … political criticism of Israel, however inflammatory or adversarial, is not, by its nature, criticism of Jews in general or based on Jewish racial or ethnic identity, and that it is not anti-semitic to criticise Israel …”
It could not be clearer. But will the court in Mary’s case be swayed? That’s impossible to say at this point. The idea that the court is even taking the Zionist Federation of Australia seriously so far is troubling. If it does not throw the case out altogether it will be alarming.
The conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is the test here and the outcome will be of enormous international significance. Thus the interest of U.S.-based Consortium News. There is no comparable case in the U.S. – not yet at least – of a journalist – and a very prominent one at that – being hauled into court accused of racial hatred for taking a principled stand against genocide and the government carrying it out.
There is no doubt that there has been a huge shift in Western public opinion since Oct.7, 2023 about what Israel is doing. Many human rights organizations, even in Israel, Holocaust scholars, U.N. officials and some governments are calling it genocide.
Mounting public pressure on Western governments has made Israel’s accomplices belatedly react. They’ve dipped their toe in the water and are blaming Israel for the starvation in Gaza and some are vowing to recognize the existing Palestinian state.
It was a far different political environment back in July 2024 when the Zionist Federation of Australia brought its action against Mary Kostakidis.
Whether that growing public outcry will be heard in the federal halls of justice in Australia is the question.
The judiciary has the opportunity in Mary Kostakidis’s case to show up a craven and complicit Australian government and take a stand against Israel and its minions that will reverberate across the West.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.
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We can expect the world will become even crazier up to and beyond the mid term elections.
There is word out which indicates major story is lurking just below the surface. MSM’s is likely privilege to the information, because it is their business to know these things. Do not expect the MSM to report this story credibly, if at all, thrust me.
By all rights of reason this story should be held by the American public as a emanate threat to both the Constitution and the nation and possibly the biggest case of law breaking in American political history with regards to vote tampering. Everyone who comments here must use the url to find this story.
News broke today the Bill and Hilarity will be forced to testify about their relationship with Jeff Epstein. Herein lies part of the story I’m referring to. Adam Zarnowski has written a book, Jormungr: A Study in Global Human Trafficking and Abolitionist Strategy. The story has been around for about six months already.
Forensic Research for the study revealed some very interesting data and records of Clinton contacts with Jeff Epstein, phone calls and traveling information. The kicker is that during this process CIA and NSA audited and 2024 election and learned of vote tampering.
The CIA and NSA buried the report after learning Kamala Harris won the election. According to information provided in this story at Substack, hXXps://substack.com/pub/thiswillhold/p/ex-cai-whsitleblower-thensaaudited?r=1kncci&utm_medium=ios.
Voting tabulators with back doors.
If you have not READ the story or miss out!
Well. An Australian judge recently demonstrated by jailing the whistleblower DavidMcBride, that following orders even to commit war crimes is the duty of soldiers upending what we thought had been established at Nuremberg.
Legal.precedent is dead when it suits the Deep State.
Wrong song ?
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ZOG (hypertext):.
Developed in the 1970s, ZOG was an early hypertext system that allowed users to navigate through interconnected information. It was used as a user interface for artificial intelligence and cognitive science programs. A second version was installed on the USS Carl Vinson in 1983.
If Zionism and Judaism are separate things then why do most Jews fund and support Zionism and its State? Why do Jews allow and encourage Zionism as Israel claim it represents every Jew on earth? Why do Jews allow Zionist Israel to maintain it is the Jewish State?
If Zionism and Judaism were not in bed with each other, no Jew would allow funding, support, or claims of representation for nearly a century.
An upside-down world it is akin to Macbeth’s witches
stirring the cauldron “Fair is foul and foul is fair, hover
through foul and filthy air”
Maybe Julian Assange’s presence will keep justice
alive in Austrian courts
It is perfectly fine to condemn behaviour: condoning, supporting or participation in the war crimes and crimes against humanity by Israel.
There are probably more non-Jewish than Jewish people that have the described behaviour, and there is also a growing and considerable percentage of Jewish people that condemn the mentioned behaviour. Hence, condemning the behaviour is both not specific for Jewish people nor generally valid Jewish people.
You can only equate condemnation of the behaviour with antisemitism when you discard all this, and then indiscriminately attribute the specified behaviour to all Jewish people. That is called racism. And it endangers the many decent Jewish people.
An upside-down world it is akin to Macbeth’s witches
stirring the cauldron “Fair is foul and foul is fair, hover
through foul and filthy air”
Maybe Julian Assange’s presence will keep justice
alive in Australian courts
Thanks, Mr. Peterson, for an apt call upon the Bard to address our troubled and troubling times, and for a hopeful thought concerning Julian Assange’s pervading (we hope!) influence. May it be so.
I fear the Zionist billionaires will win this – it is they after all that are funding this, it is they that own and control pretty much everything the western world. The planet needs a comet asap to wipe this evil from the earth forever.
It only a comet could be selective….
That the Zionist Federation of Australia even exists, as if it were some sort of organisation of ? somehow representing genuine Jews needing help, shows the depth of hatred of freedom of speech.
Mary Kostakidis is opposing a genocide, what any decent person should be doing.
*
The rapidly growing worldwide opposition by decent people to the in-your-face genocide of the Palestinians suggests this may well become the last historical, criminal infliction of genocide ever witnessed on Earth.
May it be so.