By Riyaz ul Khaliq
ISTANBUL (AA) – An Israeli lobby group was behind the sacking of a journalist at Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), a report claimed on Tuesday citing a coordinated campaign which includes messaging on WhatsApp.
It has triggered an in-house protest with staff threatening to walkout.
Award-winning journalist and author Antoinette Lattouf was terminated by ABC last month for sharing on Instagram a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Palestine's besieged enclave of Gaza.
The global rights watchdog released a report on how starvation was used as ‘a weapon of war’ by the Israeli government in Gaza. ABC also published a news item about the HRW report.
“The ABC sacked broadcaster Antoinette Lattouf after a high-level and coordinated letter-writing campaign from pro-Israel lobbyists that directly targeted the corporation’s chair, Ita Buttrose, and managing director David Anderson,” daily Sydney Morning Herald found in an investigative report which includes “dozens of leaked messages from a WhatsApp group called Lawyers for Israel.”
The report reveals that the Israeli lobby “repeatedly wrote to the ABC demanding Lattouf be sacked, and threatened legal action if she was not.”
Lattouf legally challenged her termination, calling it “not a win for journalism or critical, fair thinking.”
She is crowdfunding to support her court case in Australia which has seen widespread support for Palestinians.
While the ABC has denied Anderson was behind Lattouf, the broadcaster has told court that the journalist was removed “because she ignored a direction from managers and shared a controversial social media post from Human Rights Watch.”
On Tuesday, some 80 staff met at the ABC’s Ultimo headquarters in Sydney and sought meeting with managing director David Anderson.
Israel has launched a deadly onslaught on the Gaza Strip since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, killing at least 24,100 people and injuring 60,834 others. Nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed.
Elaine Pearson, Asia director at HRW, criticized ABC's move to terminate Lattouf.
"Journalists should be encouraged to amplify human rights reporting, not penalised for doing so," Pearson said on X.