New blow for hate speech preacher
Wissam Haddad was found to have breached the racial discrimination act following a four-day hearing in the Federal Court last month over a series of speeches he gave in November 2023, in which he described Jewish people as 'vile', 'treacherous', 'mischievous' and 'wicked and scheming'.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry's (ECAJ) co-chief executive Peter Wertheim AM and deputy president Robert Goot AO SC to launched court action against Mr Haddad over the speeches, arguing they constituted unlawful discrimination; Mr Haddad claimed he was referring to Islamic scripture in most cases. Wissam Haddad was found in breach of the racial discrimination act. NewsWire / Nikki Short Credit: News Corp Australia
The proceedings also extended to the Al Madina Dawah Centre (AMDC) for posting videos of the speeches online via Facebook and video-sharing platform Rumble.
Justice Angus Stewart found Mr Haddad and AMDC breached the racial discrimination act in delivering and publishing the speeches online, which he said included 'fundamentally racist and anti-Semitic' age-old tropes against Jewish people which were reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate and intimidate Jewish people in Australia.
More than two weeks following the judgment, Justice Stewart has now moved to prevent corrective notices from being 'deliberately buried' on Mr Haddad's and AMDC's social media pages.
Mr Haddad was ordered to post a corrective notice to Instagram and Soundcloud for 30 days, which is required to be given prominence by being 'pinned' to the top of his Instagram profile and added as a story highlight. Wissam Haddad fronted a four-day hearing in the Federal Court in June. Christian Gilles / NewsWire Credit: News Corp Australia
The notices include words expressing Mr Haddad and AMDC breached the racial discrimination act and were required to remove the speeches and not to repeat or continue 'unlawful' behaviour.
AMDC were similarly ordered to add the notice as a 'featured' post on Facebook, and a featured video on Rumble.
'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 in his judgment.
While Mr Haddad and AMDC accepted changes to the wording of the notices put forth by ECAJ, they argued the feature and pin tools on Instagram and Facebook were typically used for entrepreneurial and marketing purposes, and therefore would force them to 'advertise' and 'promote' the notice and go beyond what they considered an appropriate redress measure.
However Justice Stewart was satisfied pinning and featuring posts on the platforms was 'not onerous', 'complicated' or 'time consuming', and doesn't require the payment of any fees.
'I am also not persuaded that to require the respondents to 'pin' and 'feature' the corrective notices would be unduly burdensome from the perspective of dominating or cluttering their relevant accounts,' Justice Stewart's judgment stated.
'Other posts will still be able to be made, and it is proposed that the notices are required to be published for only 30 days.'
He noted the notice would be promoted to an extent, but said Mr Haddad and AMDC had 'promoted the unlawful lectures and it is not disproportionate to require them to promote the corrective notice'.
He also rejected Mr Haddad and AMDC's arguments the lectures weren't 'directly' posted to Instagram and Facebook, finding the links posted on the platforms to those lectures facilitated 'easy access for anyone interested in seeing the lectures'. Executive Council of Australian Jewry members Robert Goot and Peter Wertheim leave Federal Court. NewsWire / Jeremy Piper Credit: News Corp Australia Executive Council of Jewry Deputy President Robert Goot. NewsWire / Nikki Short Credit: News Corp Australia
Mr Wertheim welcomed the new order in a statement on Thursday afternoon.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter 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 anti-Semitic speeches,' Mr Wertheim said.
In his judgment at the beginning of July, Justice Stewart discarded arguments by Mr Haddad and AMDC that the speeches in question were exempt under 18D of the racial discrimination act as they had a genuine purpose in the public interest, and in AMDC's case, that the speeches were a 'fair and accurate report' on a matter of public interest.
They had also submitted the relevant sections of the racial discrimination act were beyond parliamentary powers due to the implied freedom of political communication, and additionally the freedom to exercise any religion as per the constitution, both of which Justice Stewart found to have failed.
Both Mr Haddad and AMDC were ordered to remove the lectures from their social media and to take all reasonable steps to request any re-publishers also remove the speeches if they become aware of their redistribution.
He moved to restrain Mr Haddad from discriminating against Jewish people in the future, barring him from causing words, sounds or images to be communicated anywhere 'otherwise than in private' which attribute characteristics to Jewish people that convey any of the disparaging imputations identified from the speeches.
Mr Haddad and AMDC were also ordered to cover the costs of the Federal Court proceedings.
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