Friday, May 1, 2026

Antoinette Lattouf, Women Who Win


- Loved this book. Lattouf tells the stories of lots of women pioneers and protestors throughout Australia’s history. 

- Her writing is often cheeky and colloquial but she digs deep into the predicament of so many women who were sacrificing so much to overcome the constant barriers facing them. Since Australia's founding men were in charge, not just domestically but politically, morally, legally and socially. Across every spectrum of society women’s ambitions were constantly denied and their opinions and protests ignored. They couldn't stand for parliament, they couldn't study and get employment as lawyers, abortion was illegal, and so many women were denied access to so many domains dominated by men. 

- Running throughout these stories is her own - her sacking from the ABC for sending as a private person on Instagram the Human Rights Watch condemnation of Israel’s starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza. A WhatsApp group called 'Lawyers for Israel' wanted her sacked and rendered 'unemployable'. Millions of people across the world, including thousands in Australia, had read the HRW statement, but how dare an ABC employee of a Lebanese, Arab, or Middle Eastern 'race' innocently repost it.  

- David Anderson, the ABC’s Managing Director, and Ita Buttrose, the Chair, were harassed by the Israeli lobby and, as is so typical of ignorant and cowardly management, they caved. 

- Lattouf describes the effect this had on her emotional wellbeing. And on her family, her husband and two young daughters. It was devastating. 

- After the ABC refused to settle on reasonable grounds, the case went to court in early 2025, and after a long and stressful time the Judge handed down his verdict. She won. 

- ABC management 'should have stamped out the sparks of external pressure, but instead they tried to extinguish me. In doing so, they doused themselves in accelerant and struck the match...' They also had to pay $220,000 to Latouf, and had spent more than $2.6 million fighting her plus internal legal staffing fees. 


(Recently the publisher UQP cancelled publication of the children’s book Bila, a River Cycle by Wiradjuri writer Jazz Money and Indigenous illustrator Matt Chun because of Chun's political views on the Bondi attack and Israel's slaughter of Indigenous Palestinians. Here are Chun's contentious views which were not included in the book in any way, shape or form. Once again senior managers indulged in disgraceful and cowardly behaviour. And remember MUP's appalling cancellation of the respected journal Meanjin? How on earth are our cultural and academic leaders so easily coerced by the Zionist lobby?)