Zionist “Vexatious Legal Action” Against Kostakidis Will Go to Trial, After Failed Mediation

The second attempt at mediation in relation to the discrimination complaint that Zionist Federation of Australia chief executive Alon Cassuto filed against renowned Australian journalist Mary Kostakidas in July 2024 has ended in nonagreement. And as the case will now go to trial in late 2026, Kostakidis asserts she won’t be shying away from this fight, as there is “far too much at stake”.

Cassuto filed his initial racial vilification complaint against Kostakidis with the Australian Human Rights Commission, in respect of two social media posts critical of Israel that the journalist had posted to X. The CEO claimed the posts were antisemitic, and there was particular focus on one repost featuring a clip of the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah speaking.

But when the AHRC mediation process broke down in late 2024, the Zionist Federation head then filed what’s been dubbed a “vexatious legal action” against Kostakidis, at the same time that further mounting complaints were being lodged against Australian cultural figures who were speaking out against the genocide that Israel is continuing to perpetrate in the Gaza Strip.

These multiple acts of warfare lodged by Zionists against critics of the Israeli settler colonial project have provided the nation with a keen understanding of how a US-style McCarthyite witch hunt plays out.

Requested by the Zionist Federation, the second mediation process having ended in nonagreement had followed an earlier attempt by Kostakidis to have the entire case struck out in mid-2025. This was after Cassuto had taken the complaint to the Federal Court on 31 March last year, which was the final day he had to file the suit following the failure of the AHRC process to bring about a settlement.

The request to strike the case out was denied by Federal Court Justice Stephen McDonald last October, as he found the defence assertion that a journalist simply reporting news cannot be said to be acting in a racially or religiously prejudicial manner, didn’t hold up. And Cassuto versus Kostakidis is set to go before the same Federal Court justice commencing on 30 November this year.

Attempting to silence critics

“As an Australian and as a journalist, I have a responsibility to stand up for our right to criticise a government engaged in what the UN, most major human rights organisations around the world, including in Israel and most genocide scholars, have deemed is a genocide,” Kostakidis said in a 27 February 2026 post on social media platform X, following the attempt at mediation last Friday.

“Strong criticism of a country being investigated by the ICJ for plausible genocide, whose leaders are wanted by the ICC, is not only warranted, it is necessary,” she added. “I have been cognisant of the complexity of geopolitical issues my entire life and cannot resile from the very thing that propels my enquiry – wanting to understand both what is happening and why, including the historical context.”

The mid-2024 Zionist complaint against Kostakidis, charging her with antisemitism, was made when the Australian constituency was relatively unaware of the long-term practice of proponents of Israel to label criticism of that country’s human rights abuses, as portraying hatred towards Jewish people in order to block such criticism. But these days, it is well versed in this practice.

Another difference about the time in which the complaint was lodged and the present is that back in mid-2024, Israel was still denying that Gaza was a genocide, whereas the United Nations officially ruled that it was such an atrocity in September 2025, which followed the International Criminal Court having issued a war crime arrest warrant against Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu in April last year.

“No one should presume they are entitled to hijack our deliberations and conclusions made in good faith, to the best of our ability, and after taking into account the views of all parties to a conflict and stakeholders,” the former SBS World News presenter further remarked, in relation to the presumptuous manner in which Cassuto sought to get vexatiously litigious in her direction.

Concealing truths by curbing speech

The post that so outraged Cassuto involved Kostakidis having reposted another user’s post that featured a clip of the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah decrying Israel, as his group was engaged in low-level fighting with Tel Aviv at the time over Gaza. Kostakidis further commented that Israel was getting some of its “own medicine”, as Gazan civilians had been pounded for months.

The local McCarthyite witch hunt initially involved the ABC sacking journalist Antoinette Lattouf over her having reshared a post about starvation in Gaza. Palestinian Australian writer and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah has come under Zionist lobby attack on multiple occasions over this period. And there have further been academics, doctors and musicians pulled up over criticising Israel.

Zionism is the late 1880s political doctrine advocating for the creation of a Jewish state in historic Palestine. Today, this is Israel. Proponents of Israel have long labelled detractors of Zionism or Israel’s apartheid state as being antisemitic, as this helps to curb political criticism, as being labelled as antisemitic is harsh, as it triggers the memory of the World War II Nazi Holocaust against the Jews.

To serve this mission, the IHRA working definition on antisemitism is applied, as it is accompanied by eleven examples of prejudice against Jewish people, seven of which involve Israel. So, the Zionist lobby has been advocating that western governments adopt it, and local antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal has embarked upon a whole-of-government, including tertiary sector, IHRA definition overhaul.

Stand with Mary Kostakidis

“Nobody believes that the allegations against Mary are anything but a coordinated effort to silence reporting and criticisms of the behaviour of a foreign power,” Information Rights Project founder Gabriel Shipton told Sydney Criminal Lawyers on Tuesday. “Australians have a right to be informed and the case against Mary Kostakidis is trying to deny us those very rights.”

The Information Rights Project is running a campaign around the Kostakidis case, maintaining that the rights to political expression and to freely share information are under attack.

The project run by Shipton, Julian Assange’s brother, further highlights the act of lawfare. This involves cases like the one lodged against Kostakidis, where it appears that the real purpose of going to court is more about the prior smearing of the defendant’s name in the media, along with dragging them through the expensive and drawn out legal process, than any final judicial ruling.

Kostakidis’ case also mimics a fight that is going on across our entire society at present, as the application of the IHRA definition, or rather the silencing of criticism of Israel in the public sphere, is underway. This includes adopting the definition at all levels of government, along with key institutions and the education sector. And these shifts aren’t being widely reported to the public.

“I will not be told what to think, and whether you agree or not with conclusions I have reached on specific issues,” Kostakidis made clear on X, following the latest unsuccessful mediation meeting. “I’m sure you wouldn’t stand for it either.”

“Our government should stand on the right side of history and impose sanctions on Israel, as we did against South Africa,” the acclaimed journalist said in ending. “Israel should not be held to a different standard.”