Back when I lived in Australia, I remember journalist Mary Kostakidis as pretty much the face of Australia’s SBS television station, which provided multicultural programming. I recall her as very presentable and articulate. In fact, she was the first woman to present a national prime time news bulletin.
Fast forward to 2023, and Mary Kostakidis has been brought back to my attention – for all the wrong reasons.
Her entire Twitter timeline these days is dedicated not just to bashing Israel, but crossing the line into antisemitism and terror justification.
Like when she compares us with the Nazis and Hamas with the Jews:
Kostakidis received a lot of backlash for this, but this has only led her to double down, claiming all she was doing is criticizing the Israeli government with a twist of “some of my best friends the best critics are Jewish”:
as well as claiming they were not her words; she was merely quoting someone else (before launching into another diatribe about us supposedly trying to eradicate the palestinian Arabs and no-one being fooled by the term “antisemite” anymore):
Eliza I have been sent your story.
— 💧Mary Kostakidis (@MaryKostakidis) December 5, 2023
I highlighted the film and reviewer’s comments because seeing the film may help us understand the effect of oppression, relentless killing, dispossession and imprisonment of even very young children over decades, that has been the reality of…
Naturally, she dabbles in the antisemitic trope of the all-powerful Jewish lobby controlling governments:
even sloppily using the “J” word:
If this all wasn’t bad enough, she has alleged Israel’s actions are worse than Hamas’ of October 7:
and shared an article “de-mystifying Hamas”:
Here is an excerpt from that article:
The uncritical use of the label ‘terrorist’ to apply only to Hamas has allowed Israel and its gullible allies to deflect attention from other terrorists who have used and are using violence and intimidation against Palestinian civilians.
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But looking further, identifies similarities between the Jewish state of Israel and the Islamic base of Hamas. Each government has merged religion with politics, each has ignored a separation of powers to ensure that civility and human rights are not stifled by religious dogma. Each has nurtured messianic beliefs to justify attacking the other. But only Hamas is held responsible for brutal murders, whereas Israel, despite its current depravity in the slaughter of 16,000 Gazans, 6000 of whom are children, somehow escapes even a modest glance at history.
Hamas began in Gaza as the equivalent of a welfare, education and health care NGO. In 2006, standing as an Islamist party against the secular Fatah, Hamas won an election which international observers agreed was scrupulously fair. Although the US, Israel and western governments claimed to believe in democracy, they refused to accept the Hamas’ election success and decided to punish Gazan voters. The siege of two million people began.
When interviewed about Hamas, if interviewees do not condemn the organization, they run the risk of being labelled a terrorist sympathiser, another generalisation devoid of history. Admittedly authoritarian, the Islamist government of Gaza is depicted as wanting to destroy Israel but after the second Intifada, from 2000, evidence indicates that Hamas agreed with the Palestinian Authority to distinguish between Zionism and Judaism and could co-exist with an Israeli state.
Irrespective of that development, unaware publics are served media, political repeats that Hamas exists to destroy Israel, while terrorist-like violence among armed settlers on the West Bank, merits little or no condemnation.
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Examination of the terrorist colonisation of Palestine could start in the 1940s when the Jewish Stern gang attacked British personnel, airfields, railway yards and other Palestinian installations. They assassinated British officials overseas and sought alliance with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
Leader of the Stern gang, Yitzhak Shamir became Prime Minister of Israel, 1983-84 and 1986-90.
It is no wonder Kostakidis even retweets from Hamas-affiliated websites like Quds News Network:
And as Australians (and in fact Jews everywhere) face real rising antisemitism, Kostakidis downplays it:
Meanwhile, while she pushes the idea of a (non-existent) genocide in Gaza, she has denied the Uighur genocide.
It is bad enough that anyone push such vile views but Kostakidis is an actual journalist, who is supposed to be fair, accurate, and impartial.
Kostakidis has become a disgrace, not just to the profession of journalism but as a human being. Which makes her a prime candidate for getting a gig with Qatar’s Al Jazeera or Iran’s Press TV.
