By CAITLIN POWELL FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA and ADELAIDE LANG FOR AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
Australian Jewish leaders have celebrated a win following a legal battle against an Islamist preacher who described their community as 'vile' and 'treacherous'.
Sydney-based Al Madina Dawah Centre cleric, Wissam Haddad, was accused of racial discrimination in relation to a series of fiery sermons, which have racked up thousands of views online, since November 2023.
The preacher, also known as Abu Ousayd, referred to Jewish people as 'vile, treacherous, murderous, and mischievous'.
During the landmark case at the NSW Federal Court in Sydney, leaders from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) argued the online lectures were offensive and could incite violence towards Jews.
Justice Angus Stewart found on Tuesday that the speeches were disparaging and likely to offend, insult, harass or intimidate Jewish people.
'The imputations include age-old tropes against Jewish people that are fundamentally racist and anti-Semitic,' he said.
'They make perverse generalisations against Jewish people as a group.'
ECAJ's co-chief executive Peter Wertheim and deputy president Robert Goot stood proudly outside the court after the verdict which 'vindicated' them.
'It confirms that the days when Jewish communities and the Jewish people can be vilified and targeted, with impunity, are a thing of the past,' Mr Wertheim said.
'(This case) was about antisemitism and the abuse of those freedoms in order to promote antisemitism.'
'If the 300 ancestry groups and 100 faith communities living in Australia today were all free to vilify one another in the way that Mr Haddad vilified the Jewish people, the door would be wide open to chronic racial and sectarian strife.'
'(This would be) of the kind that has devastated other countries, and the peace and harmony we have generally enjoyed in Australia would be ruined for everyone.'
Mr Goot described the preacher as a 'picture of anti-Semitic hatred', adding that he had brought the case to court to protect the Jewish community's safety.
'No community in this wonderful country should be dehumanised in the way that Mr Haddad treated us,' he said.
'Freedom of expression must not be abused by the promotion of hateful antisemitism.'
'Those that wish to do so, should know that that conduct will not be tolerated by us.'
The ECAJ leaders' case sought the removal of the published speeches, a public declaration of error and an order restraining Mr Haddad from making similar comments in future.
Mr Haddad denied breaching anti-discrimination laws and claimed he was delivering historical and religious lectures on events from the Qur'an to contextualise the war in Gaza.
He said he was speaking about 'Jews of faith' rather than ethnicity while trying to explain that 'what the Israeli government is doing to the people of Gaza' is 'not something new'.
Ruling against the preacher would be tantamount to restricting the free exercise of religious expression, Mr Haddad’s lawyer argued.
But Justice Stewart rejected the defence on Tuesday and ordered Mr Haddad to remove the speeches.
He directed the preacher not to make any further comments that convey similar disparaging imputations.
Mr Haddad has also been ordered to foot the legal bill for the ECAJ which the leaders told reporters would be 'several hundred thousand dollars'.
The preacher's speeches were delivered during a time of heightened sensitivity after the designated terror group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, sparking Israeli retaliation that has left the Gaza Strip in turmoil.
The reporting of the war prompted questions and concerns from Mr Haddad's congregants and at the same time left Jewish Australians feeling unsafe, the court was told.