Today’s hearing began with the ABC apologising for filing an unredacted affidavit revealing the name of a complainant.
Two own goals for @ABCaustralia
With respect to the very wise move to change their position on race in this case, I think it can be assumed Chair Kim Williams would have come down on management like a ton of bricks. He has been outspoken on change required at the broadcaster, and this catastrophic case is public confirmation of the rectitude of that position.

@ABCaustralia Currently Ahern being cross examined by ABC - he is held responsible for hiring Lattouf. Next today will be then Chair Buttrose followed by Green, her direct supervisor whose evidence will be an integral piece in the puzzle of what Lattouf was told, as she did the telling.

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💧Mary Kostakidis

@MaryKostakidis

Feb 8

In light of the ongoing court case brought by @antoinette_news against the @ABCaustralia for unfair dismissal, it’s worth recalling her proposal to the ABC in order to settle the matter which I’ll post in a thread below.
Instead, the ABC decided to defend their decision, exposed in excruciating detail and at enormous expense to the taxpayer - we are funding the 14 month battle (so far) and the massive US law firm Seyfarth the ABC has engaged to fight it. It will be costing a fortune.
Here is what she had asked for to settle it months ago:
🧵

Read 4 tweets

💧Mary Kostakidis

@MaryKostakidis

Feb 3

Fascinating day in court as @antoinette_news lawyer outlines content of emails between senior members of the ABC prior to her HRW post, the pressure they came under from the lobby group Lawyers for Israel from the moment she was on air, because of her known political opinions, their conclusion the position was untenable but that they could not sack her abuse she had done nothing wrong and for fear of the phenomenal ‘blowback’.
The manner in which she was sacked - called to a brief meeting and told to collect her things and leave the building did not follow the proscribed procedure under the enterprise agreement according to her lawyer.
Her sacking followed her repost of a HRW report stating Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war.
Court adjourned briefly..
If you wish to follow, livestream here

youtube.com/live/a8RorBeAi…

And documents here

fedcourt.gov.au/services/acces…

Lattouf’s lawyer lists numerous additional complaints from the lobby group to the Chair and MD on the day she was sacked, and The Australian, which evidently knew of the complaints, called the ABC.
He says emails show ABC senior figures were sympathetic to the Israel lobby’s position.
A slide of AL’s post simply saying ‘HRW reporting starvation as a tool of war’ is shown - apparent this could not be construed as anything but a statement of fact, and in addition, with ABC news stories appeared on the HRW report prior to and after AL’s post.

Her lawyer refers to an unwritten expectation that ABC employees will not do at any time anything that may convey the view they are not impartial.

He says ABC claims it imposed on AL a bespoke rule (not to post about Gaza) and then sacked her for breaching that standard.

If Senior Exec Oliver Taylor asserts the post expresses an opinion, then the dismissal is because of her political opinions - ‘opinionated’ and ‘partial’ mean the same thing, so they hold the post revealed impartiality.

If Senior Management were agnostic on the Gaza issue, then they succumbed to a campaign.
Either ABC capitulated to a lobby or she breached a standard specific to her.

He says the ABC submission is long and an elaborate navigation for the ABC narrative, characteristic of a lawyers drafting, when there is ample material in the contemporaneous emails, in order to reinterpret clear statements in emails; the affidavits don’t deal with critical issues - who gave the direction and when? Her supervisor Green stated in their meeting that she did not give Lattouf a ‘directive’ not to post, she ‘advised’ her to avoid it. The complex affidavits don’t describe why the post was ‘partial’ - the post doesn’t appear in Taylor’s affidavit at all ie the very thing that was ostensibly the reason for the sacking.
Apropos communications, the ABC are prohibited from using Signal as they are subject to the Archives Act and can’t delete.
ABC Witness statements are he says replete with terms like ‘trust and confidence’, ‘impartiality’ etc
Oliver Taylor believes she was given a direction ‘bespoke to her’ not to post about Gaza, and her post ‘may’ have breached that direction.
He says the ABC justify not following their protocols for dismissal because a presenter can be removed even if she hasn’t done anything wrong (rostering change etc).
Lattouf asserts if she was not of the Lebanese race she would not have been removed in that way.
The ABC will assert says there is no evidence there is such a thing as a Lebanese race. The ABC lawyer rose - he objects to this being run as a discrimination case because it departs from the pleadings.

SAl’s lawyer says the issue is whether she was dismissed because of the HRW post, or because of objections to her political opinion by the lobby group and the Chair of the ABC.

Also, AL’s lawyer says that there could be no rational basis for Taylor to believe her post was a sackable offence. That the evidence she was given a directive particular to her was implausible given Green told management she didn’t issue a directive. Nevertheless, Taylor concluded a directive was given. And he thought there ‘may’ have been a breach of ABC social media policy.
1 of 2 for this morning session

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💧Mary Kostakidis

@MaryKostakidis

Nov 24, 2024

Here is @SlezakPeter - academic and son of Holocaust survivors - powerful speech at the Sydney rally yesterday (1 of 3)

‘I’m among very many Jews, here and around the world to protest what Israel is doing in our name, and I’m proud to join you every week for over a year in solidarity with Palestinians.

I want to give a shout-out to those each week holding the banner “Jews Against the Occupation.” Our presence and our solidarity refute the smear that these rallies are antisemitic Jew-hate rallies. I know what antisemitism is and it's not here EVER at these rallies.

My mother survived the WW2 Nazi Auschwitz extermination camp, and she always asked why was the world silent? Why did they look away from the genocide of the Jews and do nothing? Today we know the answer as our government and media look away and do nothing for the Palestinians.

Well, in the last few days we have seen the landmark decision by the International Court of Justice – the ICC – an important victory for accountability:

The ICC has issued warrants for the arrest of two of Israel’s leaders – Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Gallant. Both are charged as perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Above all, the ICC arrest warrants confirm that those of us protesting here each week, and especially the university student encampments, were right all along.

The war crimes charged against Netanyahu include:

• Starvation of the civilian population of Gaza.

• depriving them medicine, fuel and electricity.

• military attacks against the civilian population.

• murder and other inhumane acts against the civilian population.

• blocking humanitarian aid.

• the destruction of the civilian population in Gaza – which is the very definition of genocide.

Australia as a member of the Rome Statute and ICC is legally under an obligation to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant if they arrive here. However, Australia is yet to confirm whether or not it will comply with arrest warrants issued for these indicted war criminals…
Cont

2/3
‘The Weekend Australian newspaper (Nov 24, 2004) refers to the “silence by Foreign Minister Penny Wong” who is “pretending to sit on the fence”. And The ABC Headline says “Australia tip-toes around ICC decision” issuing only an opaque motherhood statements.

What is she waiting for?
Well, she is probably ambivalent because in March Albanese and Wong were also referred to the ICC for being complicit in the Gaza genocide in a claim co-signed by over 100 Australian lawyers.
Of course, Zionists in Australia are apoplectic and having a melt-down echoing Netanyahu’s excuses:

• Predictably, using the usual get-out-of-jail-free card, he called it an “anti-semitic decision.”

Even in Israel’s newspaper Ha’aretz the headline says:

"Netanyahu Brought the ICC Ruling on Himself and Now He's Whining About Antisemitism".

There is a great deal of deliberate, cynical confusion about this. Let me be clear: As the Jewish historian Norman Finkelstein has said, Israel is a rogue, lunatic state. It is not antisemitic to say Fuck Israel and Fuck Zionism: A guy was arrested on Bondi Beach for wearing this on his T-shirt.

• Netanyahu said “No war is more just than the war Israel has been waging in Gaza” because Israel’s destruction of Gaza is in SELF-DEFENCE !!!

This is DECEITFUL, DELUSIONAL BULLSHIT

In international law, it’s not actually OK to starve children to death for self-defence!!

We have all seen the pictures – mile after mile of residential cities reduced to rubble. What kind of sick mind can consider the complete destruction of Gaza as “self-defence” – targeting Hamas militants hiding behind human shields.

Since October 7 last year, Gaza has been transformed from the largest open-air prison in the world to the LARGEST MASS-GRAVE.

And the OTHER Albanese, the wonderful UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, points out that Israel has no right to defend itself against resistance emanating from the territory it controls under occupation.

On the contrary, according to international law it is the people under occupation who have the right to resist, including the right to armed resistance.

Israel has dropped more bombs on Gaza than the Allied bombing in World War 2 on Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined! More bombs on Gaza in a week than the US dropped on Afghanistan in one year ...

In 1967 during the Vietnam War, American scholar Noam Chomsky said something relevant today:

“With no further information than this, a person who has not lost his senses must realize that the war is an overwhelming atrocity.”

The assault on Gaza is not a “war” but a cowardly act of terrorism by the most sophisticated military force against a defenceless population.

It’s important to recognize that the excessive, disproportionate military force against civilians – mass murder – is deliberate – it is official Israeli military policy. It’s actually called the DAHIYA DOCTRINE – GOOGLE IT!! ..
Cont

3 of 3
Doctors have been speaking out about the horrors they witnessed.

One American Doctor said “Every Day I was there I saw children shot in the head. That's not an accident. That's deliberate targeting of children for death. That's murder." SHAME.

Another doctor, British surgeon, Nizam Mamode, recently returned from Gaza, and testified in front of the UK Parliament. With tears, he barely could speak. He said that Israeli drones would pick off and shoot injured civilians, including children.

• Netanyahu says that “Hamas attacked us UNPROVOKED…”

But, of course, history didn’t begin on October 7th last year. GAZA has been under illegal, brutal BLOCKADE – since 2007.

In 2018 there was the peaceful protests of the Great March of Return in Gaza during which Israeli snipers killed or maimed hundreds of unarmed protesters, disabled people, nurses.

Australian Human Rights expert at the UN Chris Sidoti said: “Israel’s is one of the most criminal armies in the world” because “this is a period without precedent in a war that has been going for a century.”

= = =

After arrest warrants for Netanyahu & Gallant were issued, Israeli forces escalated mass killings of civilians in Gaza. At least 9 massacres were documented

• A day after, at least 90 Palestinians, including 36 children, were killed.

Of course, Penny Wong says that there is a need “to end the cycle of violence.”

What “cycle of violence”?

If Tel Aviv was reduced to rubble like Gaza City, Khan Yunis or Shujaiya, the world would stop the war immediately.

WEST BANK

We must not neglect immense tragedy of the occupied West Bank

Just since October 7, Israeli forces and settlers have killed OVER 700 people, including at least 167 children. More than 6,000 people have been injured.

There is NO HAMAS in the West Bank but for years, Israel has been killing on average two kids a week.

In July, Senator Penny Wong said that the Australian Government has imposed financial sanctions and travel bans on seven Israeli settlersfor their violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

That’s PATHETIC!

The ENTIRE Israeli Government is a bunch of terrorists and extremist criminals – They are guilty of immense, obscene violence against Palestinians SINCE 1948.

In the West Bank, there are now over 700,000 Israeli settlers in vast cities all illegal according to international law …

Protected by the Israeli military, they are rampaging around uprooting millions of olive trees, destroying water wells and torching cars. Israel has demolished 60,000 Palestinian houses in the West Bank.

ICJ Ruling

On 19 July 2024 the ICJ reiterated the illegality of the entire Israel occupation of the West Bank and GAZA. The decision calls for dismantling of settlements and reparations.

The Court specifically said that states like Australia should not recognise Israel’s unlawful presence in occupied territory, nor should they render aid or assistance in maintaining it.

So far, Australia has done next to nothing

BDS

However, states must immediately suspend all investment, trade and scientific, technical and technological cooperation in these areas and engage in a systematic review of all economic, financial, academic, diplomatic and political ties with Israel.

We must recall our ambassador from Tel Aviv;
We must expel Israel’s ambassador from Australia;

FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA

Finally, it’s important for me to say something about our chant heard at rallies around the world – “From the River to the Sea …”

The APOLOGISTS for ISRAEL’s crimes – including Prime Minster Albanese - claim that this slogan is antisemitic or even a call for the annihilation of Israel.

But The charter of the governing Likud party says there will be no Palestinian state between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly, publicly rejected the possibility of a Palestinian State…
Woops, one more.. cont

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💧Mary Kostakidis

@MaryKostakidis

Jul 14, 2024

In an effort to silence me the Zionist Federation have filed a complaint with the HRC for racial vilification, aided by a reporter who can’t do his own research.

Having first used the discredited Anti-Defamation League (they should be called the Anti-Free-Speech-for-anyone-we-do-not-agree-with-League), and the CEO of a company that trains IDF soldiers to become propagandists - to improve Israel’s image to the world (because the country is an apartheid state having stolen land, ‘mowed the lawn’ with gratuitous killing of Palestinians for decades, tortured detainees held often without charge, herded a couple of million people into a ghetto/open air prison, then launched a genocide), to attempt to frame me as a rape and Holocaust denier.
This because I have been sharing the reports of extremely highly regarded independent journalists who have written about the absence of credible evidence the claims of ‘systemic, widespread rape’ by Hamas on Oct 7. The Beheaded Babies, the 40 burnt babies, the genital mutilations, the systemic rape were all unsubstantiated or proven false. The Israelis claim the have footage and photos but the latest U.N. investigation made no finding of rape.
To be clear, I have never said there was No Rape. It is something I could never say - it would be a nonsense for anyone to make such a definitive statement.
Yet the double page story by Chip Le Grand makes no reference to a)my series of tweets about rape over a period of months that make clear I’m referring to systemic rape. The offending tweet is one where I put it would be counter to their mission to spend time on rape because they would jeopardise their mission which was to grab hostages and try to stay alive for long enough to escape. They would have to be pretty dumb to risk it. As it turns out, as I proffered, the latest U.N. investigation found no evidence that would allow them to conclude there had been rape. But Chip Le Grand reports none of this.
His story also took umbrage at my comment that we can’t know how many Israel deaths were caused by the IDF on Oct 7. Many independent commentators are now saying precisely that, including Gideon Levy. Even Piers Morgan can’t accept the Israelis know for a fact that a considerable number of Israelis were not killed on that day, because of the Hannibal Directive. And the. There is the indiscriminate nature of the shelling. There was more than ‘a kernel of truth’. ‘No car should make it back to Gaza’ means all the hostages being killed for a start.
At the risk of boring you, we now move on to The Sequel. 1/

Today I received another email from Chip, who is very well informed about what the Zionist lobby gets up to on a Sunday.

Good morning Mary.

Zionist Federation of Australia chief executive Alon Cassuto is today lodging a complaint against you with the Australian Human Rights Commission under Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

The complaint relates to your Twitter post from 4 January, when you reposted a link to a speech by Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, in which he told Jewish people living in Israel and the occupied territories:

"Here, it is going to be very difficult for you. If you want to be secure, if you want to feel secure, you have an American passport, go back to the United States. You have a British passport, go back to the UK. Here you don't have a future, from the river to the sea the land of Palestine is for the Palestinian people and the Palestinian people only.''

You prefaced the link to the speech with the comment: "The Israeli govt getting some of its own medicine. Israel has started something it can't finish with this genocide.''

Cassuto says that Nasrallah's speech calls for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel and the occupied territories and alleges that, by sharing a link to it with your 30,000-odd Twitter followers, you disseminated hate speech against Israelis and Jewish people.

The ZFA says that through this and more than 100 other Twitter posts since October 7, you have misused your standing and profile as a highly respected former newsreader and face of our multicultural broadcaster, to share extreme propaganda and hateful material.

Could I please ask you:

Why did you share Nasrallah's speech?

Do you agree that material you have shared on Twitter since October 7 vilifies Israelis and Jewish people?

Is there any other comment you would like to make?

Thanks Mary. The ZFA announced earlier today they are holding a 2pm press conference to discuss this matter. I will publish a first take story at 2pm and would like to include your response.

Otherwise, I can update the story anytime before 5pm to include your comments.

I'll also give you a call.

Best regards,

Chip.

Chip Le Grand
Chief reporter

2/ .. see my reply

As I was out with my grandchildren, I had not replied, so he called me and I responded but decided to put it in writing when I was free to do so:

‘As I said on the phone I believe it is important to know what both sides are saying in a conflict.

With regards to Israel inviting escalation by launching a genocide, I responded similarly when Israel retaliated against Hamas.

You might equally say if you were being briefed by Palestinians instead of Zionists Chip, was I intimating that Hamas or the Palestinian people deserved what they got in response.
The point is when one side acts in an extreme way, it invites retaliation. Sadly that is the case. (Cont.)

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