ECAJ moves to bankrupt Haddad over unpaid costs

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has filed a bankruptcy application in the Federal Court against preacher Wissam Haddad, as it pursues legal costs he was ordered to pay more than a year ago.

The application, filed on October 14 by ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim and deputy president Robert Goot, seeks substituted service and remains open before the court.

Substituted service allows a bankruptcy notice to be served other than in person, if the court is satisfied all reasonable attempts have been made to find the respondent. Once served, Haddad would have 21 days to pay, after which the ECAJ could apply to have him declared bankrupt, with his assets and income transferred to a trustee.

Justice Angus Stewart found in July last year that Haddad had contravened section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act through three lectures titled The Jews of Al Medina, delivered at Bankstown’s Al Madina Dawah Centre in November 2023. The judge found they conveyed disparaging imputations about Jewish people including “age-old tropes against Jewish people that are fundamentally racist and antisemitic”, and that Haddad had made “perverse generalisations against Jewish people as a group”.

Stewart ordered Haddad and the centre to remove the lectures, later required them to publish corrective notices on their social media pages, and ordered them to pay the applicants’ costs.

The Sunday Telegraph reported that the costs run to upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars, that Haddad has paid nothing, and that locating him has proved difficult — he is a self-employed carpet layer, does not own property, uses three different spellings of his given name, and his corporation records list old addresses.

The paper also reported that Haddad closed the Al Madina Dawah Centre after allegations in December linked him to the alleged Bondi attackers, which he has denied, and that he has kept a low profile since.

Wertheim said at the time of the original ruling that the case was not about freedom of expression or religion, but about antisemitism and the abuse of those freedoms to promote it. “It confirms that the days when Jewish communities and the Jewish people can be vilified and targeted with impunity are long gone,” he said.

Goot said freedom of expression must not be abused by the promotion of hateful antisemitism, “and those that wish to do so, should know that that conduct will not be tolerated”.

The proceedings were brought after it became evident, in Wertheim’s words, that the responsible authorities could not or would not act to protect vulnerable members of the community from hate mongering, threats and violence.

Haddad has never been charged with a hate speech offence. There is no suggestion he had any involvement in or knowledge of the Bondi attack.