The case against Mary Kostakidis has been discontinued without any finding that she breached the Racial Discrimination Act, ending a two-year legal battle over political expression and criticism of Israel.
‘Free speech, journalism and democracy in a time of genocide’
That was the heading of an article by Mary Kostakidis on Pearls and Irritations on 23 October 2024.
After a two-year legal battle designed to silence a journalist for criticising Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the case against Mary Kostakidis by Zionist Federation of Australia chief executive Alan Cassuto has been discontinued, with both parties bearing their own costs. It is a victory for her and every Australian who values freedom of political expression.
Last week’s development means there is no finding that Mary breached the Racial Discrimination Act. No apology has been ordered. No costs were awarded against her. Cassuto issued a statement, unnecessarily taking shots at Kostakidis and refusing to acknowledge the win for freedom of speech – comments to cover his defeat.
Mary Kostakidis, on the other hand, said: “This is a win for every Australian who values our democratic right to freedom of political expression. Zionist zealotry has had to beat a retreat from what was going to be a highly damaging trial. 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.”
The complaint originated from social media posts in which Mary shared a speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah with a comment pointing to the threat of escalation in violence that violence begets. Unfortunately, violence did beget violence. On 27 September 2024, shortly after the social media posts, Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut.
On P&I in October 2024, Mary wrote: “I will defend both my obligation as a journalist to expose important information in aid of this, as well as my right to express an opinion about a matter I happen to know something about, having been involved in this geopolitical space for almost four decades professionally.”
She added: “No one is complaining about my or others’ posts of the genocidal and messianic speeches of senior Israeli officials, though they are indeed carrying out their threats. No doubt hearing them will be distressing to Palestinians here, whose families may lie under rubble or be among the dismembered and disembowelled or beheaded children.”
As Mary documented in that article, her case was not isolated. She had been subjected to a barrage of complaints intended to disrupt lives, to have people sacked, to destroy reputations, to bankrupt individuals in their defence of free speech. Those cases that are known publicly are, she wrote, “the tip of an iceberg”.
Antoinette Lattouf was dismissed by the ABC for sharing a Human Rights Watch post. A Federal Court found that decision was made to appease pro-Israel lobbyists. Pianist Jayson Gillham was dropped from a Melbourne Symphony Orchestra performance after speaking onstage about Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza, although a later Federal Court case rejected his claim of political discrimination. In 2019, Melissa Parke withdrew as Labor’s candidate for Curtin after controversy over comments she made about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, some drawing on her experience working in Gaza.
Mary documented all these cases. As she wrote: “The battle over ideas in a democracy should occur in social discourse – not resolved through the weaponisation of laws.”
Mary’s October 2024 article also identified the broader threat to free speech that her case represented. She warned of plans to further restrict speech – potentially criminalising ‘hate speech’ in ways that would make those who criticise Israel’s genocide liable.
Mary Kostakidis has spent four decades holding power to account. She presented SBS World News for two decades – the program that gave Australia’s multicultural communities access to journalism beyond the Anglocentric prism she described so candidly in her P&I article. She campaigned for Julian Assange. She received the 2026 Gary Webb Press Freedom Award from Consortium News, granted in recognition of her exceptional courage in reporting the truth.
In her own words, her philosophy of journalism was formed in her early newsroom days: “Journalists like Robert Fisk – and our own John Pilger – among others, did not shy away from taking a position that set them apart. Their approach aligned with my own view of how journalism should be practised and where its responsibility lies: to hold power to account, to embark on inquiry objectively, being wary of remaining partial to the perspective of one’s own culture’s prism, and never to use neutrality to compound an injustice for the victims of the wrongful exercise of power.”
She added: “Extensive efforts to shape public discourse around Israel policy in the US by pro-Israel lobby groups were ratcheted up in the past year in the face of university encampments. Those efforts include the push to redefine anti-Semitism. …We have learned to pay attention to messaging from the US political class because its allies will be expected to concurrently tackle the same issues, in this case to rein in the problem presented by free speech.”
That is the journalism the Zionist Federation of Australia tried to silence for two years. It has failed.
One hurdle that Cassuto had in this case was Justice Angus Stewart’s judgment in Wertheim v Haddad, that Zionism is a political ideology or philosophy, and that criticism of Israel or Zionism, no matter how adversarial, is not antisemitic. This finding was made while Mary’s ordeal was ongoing. Likely, it would have significantly strengthened her position.
The governments and people around the world support the Palestinians. But not the governments in settler societies, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which all have a history of genocide and ethnic cleansing of their Indigenous people.
The main reason for world understanding of the awful scale of the Israeli killing is because of brave Palestinian journalists. Three hundred of them have been assassinated by the IDF, but not a word from Australian journalists who presumably think the only reliable journalism can come from western correspondents dressed up in flak jackets and helmets, pretending they are in danger, who give us the latest ‘balanced’ view. From the IDF.
I have written many times that the weaponisation of antisemitism – its deployment against legitimate journalism and criticism of Israel’s genocide – does not protect Jewish Australians. It debases the currency of a term whose precision matters most when real antisemitism and danger occurs. Mary said this directly when she noted that she had “spent (her) entire career in one form or another working to protect our right to know and to promote the principle of human rights for all”.
‘Never again’ is for everyone, including Jews and Palestinians.
Every Australian journalist covering Gaza, Palestine and Israel’s conduct owes Kostakidis a debt. Every reader of P&I who has followed her work in these pages owes her one too.
Truth finally shines through the clouds of deception and disinformation. But it takes courage.
Mary Kostakidis showed it, as we would say, “in spades”.
Take a bow, Mary.
John Menadue is the Founder of Pearls and Irritations and a board member. He was formerly the Editor-in-Chief. John was the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.