Cassuto ends 18C case against Kostakidis

Zionist Federation of Australia chief executive Alon Cassuto has ended his Federal Court racial discrimination case against former SBS newsreader Mary Kostakidis, less than three months before it was due to go to trial.

In a statement issued on Friday, Cassuto said he had resolved the proceeding, brought under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, and that his objectives had been “substantially satisfied”.

The case concerned two posts on X in which Kostakidis republished a speech by then-Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah. Cassuto maintained the speech amounted to a call to ethnically cleanse Jews and Israelis “from the river to the sea”. Hezbollah is proscribed in its entirety as a terrorist organisation by the Australian Government.

“An important reason I brought this matter was to seek recognition of the harm these posts caused ordinary Jewish Australians,” Cassuto said.

“Following the conciliation process, Ms Kostakidis issued a public apology acknowledging the hurt caused by her posts. Public figures should be accountable for the consequences of amplifying the rhetoric of a proscribed terrorist organisation.”

Cassuto first took his complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission in July 2024. After conciliation ended without agreement, Kostakidis posted an apology on X in January 2025 in which she said she did not endorse the content of Nasrallah’s speech.

The matter moved to the Federal Court in March 2025. In October that year, Justice Stephen McDonald refused Kostakidis’ application to have the case struck out, and a three-week trial had been listed to begin on 30 November.

Cassuto said Kostakidis had now “seen the evidence of Jewish Australians who were prepared to come to Court and explain why her conduct mattered”.

According to the ZFA statement, the apology did not change the character of her public commentary. It said Kostakidis had since amplified material describing reports of sexual violence on 7 October 7 as a “rape hoax”, alleging that a firebombing of Jewish volunteer ambulances was an Israeli “false flag” operation, and describing Chabad as a “Jewish supremacist network” with historical Nazi links.

The statement said she had also shared claims that a “billionaire class of Zionist supremacists” uses money to control and corrupt American institutions.

It also pointed to a repost in March, which it said came only weeks after Iranian security forces massacred thousands of citizens protesting against the regime. The post declared: “I’m barracking for Iran. I’m barracking for Hezbollah. I’m barracking for the Houthis. I’m barracking for Hamas. I’m barracking for ANY AND ALL RESISTANCE.”

“Ms Kostakidis had a long career in mainstream journalism. Her more recent social media output is of a very different character. People can make their own judgment about what it says about the direction her public commentary has taken,” Cassuto said.

“Given everything Ms Kostakidis has chosen to publish since her apology, a further apology compelled by a Court would ring hollow.”

Cassuto said the issues that led him to bring the case were being examined by the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

“The Commissioner’s report will be handed down in December following a national examination of how antisemitism became so normalised in Australia, the role of public figures and institutions in spreading and amplifying it, and whether our laws and institutions have been adequate to confront it,” he said.

“Bondi demonstrated, in the most devastating way, why those questions matter.”

Issuing the statement on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, Cassuto described the festival as the Day of Judgment, “a time to account for our conduct, the harm we have caused, and whether expressions of regret are matched by what we choose to do next”.

“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.”