Court blocks hate preacher’s bid to ‘bury’ corrective notices

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Peter Wertheim has welcomed Federal Court orders requiring hate preacher Wissam Haddad to prominently display corrective notices on his social media pages acknowledging his unlawful conduct.

“We welcome the Federal Court’s further orders requiring Mr Haddad and the Al Madinah Dawah Centre to publish a Corrective Notice on their social media pages advising viewers of the findings of unlawful conduct and orders made against them by the court, and requiring the notice to be featured and pinned on those pages,” Wertheim said.

“We see this as an essential part of counteracting the harm that was caused by their online promotion and reproduction of Haddad’s antisemitic speeches.”

Justice Angus Stewart ruled this month that Haddad had breached section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act through a series of lectures titled “The Jews of Al Medina” that were “reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate Jewish members of the Australian community”.

The speeches, published on the Al Madina Dawah Centre’s Rumble page in November 2023, included statements disparaging Jewish people as a whole and repeating racist stereotypes.

Haddad, who is also known as Abu Ousayd, had attempted to limit the impact of the court’s orders by arguing he should not be required to “pin” corrective notices at the top of his social media pages because it would force him to “essentially advertise and promote” them.

However in a ruling on Thursday, Justice Stewart rejected this argument, accepting expert evidence that social media posts could quickly disappear from view unless given prominence through platform features.

“In short, the ‘pinning’ and ‘featuring’ of the posts will prevent them from disappearing from view in a short period of time, and it will prevent them from being deliberately buried by way of successive further posts,” Justice Stewart said.

“I do not regard it as disproportionate to the nature and extent of the wrong committed to require redress of that nature.”

The judge found that requiring the notices to be promoted was not onerous or unduly burdensome, noting the educative purpose of publication “contemplates some degree of promotion”.

Under the court orders, Haddad and the Al Madina Dawah Centre must publish corrective notices on their Facebook, Instagram, Rumble and SoundCloud pages for 30 days. The notices must acknowledge they contravened the Racial Discrimination Act and were ordered to remove the offending speeches.

Justice Stewart had previously granted the ECAJ a muzzle order that would find Haddad in contempt of court should he racially discriminate against Jewish Australians in future.

The judge ordered Haddad not to facilitate the communication of “words, sounds or images” that attribute characteristics to Jewish people based on group membership and convey disparaging imputations identified in the original lectures.

Haddad or speakers at the Al Madina Dawah Centre have previously called Jewish people “descendants of pigs and monkeys”, recited parables about their killing, and said people should “spit” on Israel so its citizens “would drown”.

Wertheim said he would call Haddad back to court for potential contempt should he breach the court orders, describing the outcome as vindication of months of community action against antisemitism.