This is an accepted version of this page
Avi Yemini | |
|---|---|
אבי ימיני | |
 Yemini in 2022 | |
| Born | Avraham Shalom Waks[1] Melbourne, Victoria, Australia |
| Citizenship |
|
| Education | Yeshivah College[1] |
| Occupations |
|
| Employer | Rebel News (since 2020) |
| Political party | Australian Liberty Alliance (2018–2019)[1][2] |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance | Israel |
| Branch | Israeli Ground Forces |
| Service years | 2004–2007 |
| Unit | Golani Brigade |
| Website | followavi |
Avraham Shalom Yemini (néWaks;Hebrew:אברהם שלום ימיני) is an Australian-Israelifar-right provocateur and commentator.[3] Since 2020 he has worked as the Australian correspondent forRebel News, a Canadian far-right website.[1][4] Yemini has been involved in numerous cases of litigation, initiated both by him and against him.
Yemini grew up in a large family inMelbourne, Victoria, and attended various Orthodox Jewish schools in Melbourne and overseas.[1] When he was 16 he became addicted to heroin and at the age of 19 joined theIsrael Defense Forces (IDF) in an attempt to get off drugs.[1] He later opened up and ran two gyms in the Melbourne area, both of which were sold in 2018.
In 2018, Yemini unsuccessfully ran as a candidate for theAustralian Liberty Alliance in theVictorian state election.[1]
Yemini was born inMelbourne, Victoria, to Zephaniah (formerly Stephen) and Hava Waks,[5] and grew up in the Melbourne suburb ofSt Kilda East.[1] He is one of seventeen children who were raised in anultra-OrthodoxChabad family.[1][6] Yemini is a younger brother ofManny Waks.[7]
Yemini attendedYeshivah College, and was later sent to ultra-Orthodox schools in the U.S., Israel and Brazil. He returned to Melbourne when he was 16, and subsequently became addicted toheroin. He spent the next two years in rehab, foster homes and crisis care.[1]
Yemini joined the IDF when he was 19, in an effort to address his drug addiction.[1] He served with the IDF'sGolani Brigade from 2005 until 2008. Most of his active duty was spent along the border of theGaza Strip.[8] After returning to Australia, Yemini opened IDF Training, a gym inCaulfield, Victoria.[9] The gym, known for trainingKrav Maga, was at the time described as largest training centre for the martial art in Australia.[10][11] In 2016 he opened a second gym in theMelbourne central business district.[12] In 2018, Yemini sold the gyms.[1]
In 2015, Yemini started his own Facebook page which he used to start building a profile by creating controversy.[1] In 2017 he worked as a content creator for theAustralian Liberty Alliance. Yemini later ran as a candidate for the Australian Liberty Alliance in theSouthern Metropolitan Region of theVictorian Legislative Council at the2018 state election.[1] He was unsuccessful, receiving 0.49% of the vote.[1] By 2019, Yemini was a staple in Australian far-right media, being a regular guest onThe Bolt Report andMark Latham'sOutsiders.[1]
In 2020, Yemini became the Australian correspondent for the Canadian far-right outlet,Rebel News.[1][4] He is known for his performance skills and opportunistic nature.[1] Through his work with Rebel, Yemini emerged as a critic of former Victorian PremierDaniel Andrews and his government's response to theCOVID-19 pandemic.[1][13][14]
In April 2016, theFacebook page for Yemini's IDF Training gym was banned for three days for sharing anantisemitic post with thehashtag "saynotoracism". Yemini said he had shared the post to raise awareness of the intolerance faced by the Jewish community.[8]
In August 2018, Yemini's main Facebook page was banned forhate speech violations.[15] The decision came after Yemini doxxed journalistOsman Faruqi, resulting in Faruqi receiving abusive messages and death threats from Yemini's followers.[16][17]
In September 2020, two of Yemini's Facebook pages were banned following inquiries byGizmodo Australia.[15] As of February 2021, Yemini was postinganti-vaccine andanti-lockdown content on Facebook.[18]
In 2016, one of Yemini's brothers, Manny Waks, sued him fordefamation after Yemini claimed that Waks and their father were harbouring a known paedophile in the family home.[19] Waks dropped the lawsuit after Yemini apologised a few months later.[1]
In July 2019, Yemini pled guilty to assault after he threw a chopping board that hit his former wife on her forehead in 2016.[20] He also pleaded guilty to using a carriage service to harass by sending abusive text messages to her, and one charge of breaching an intervention order relating to a video of a man.[20] Yemini was fined $3,600.[20]
In September 2020, Yemini initiated legal action against Victoria Police, for wrongful arrest and alleged assault during lockdown protests.[21][22] In June 2022 Victoria Police issued an apology acknowledging that Yemini had been wrongly arrested on multiple occasions while reporting for Rebel News.[23]
In 2021 Yemini was ejected and banned from theVictorian Parliament precinct for 7 days after he gained access using a media pass issued by the federalDepartment of Home Affairs for foreign dignitary visits.[24] In March 2021, he applied for accreditation to allow him access to the press galleries of both houses of the parliament and the areas sounding the buildings.[24] Yemini's application was refused with no reasons being given.[24] He then took legal action against threeVictorian parliamentary officials − including formerLegislative Assembly speakerColin Brooks.[25] Yemini subsequently lost the case.[23]
In June 2021,Zarah Garde-Wilson initiated a defamation lawsuit against Yemini after he published an image of Garde-Wilson with wording which stated that she had been arrested and charged for making death threats.[26][27] The case was settled in October 2021.[28]Rebel News agreed to remove the offending image of Garde-Wilson and issue an apology stating that no one had made any death threats.[28]
In March 2022, Yemini launched legal action againstTwitter userPRGuy17 claiming that tweets from the account were defamatory.[29] In June of that year,Twitter was ordered to hand overIP addresses associated with the account.[29][30] After Twitter handed over IP addresses associated with the account, YouTuberFriendlyjordies interviewed Jeremy Maluta who stated that the account belonged to them.[31]
In August 2022, Yemini was denied entry to New Zealand due to a 2019 criminal conviction for assaulting his ex-wife.[32] Yemini claimed the decision was due to an article inThe New Zealand Herald that described him and fellow content creatorRukshan Fernando as "Australian conspiracy commentators".[33][34] Yemini was allowed entry to New Zealand in 2023.[35]
In 2023, Yemini sued Facebookfact-checkerRMIT FactLab after it debunked claims made by him in a story about theShrine of Remembrance's CEO.[36] He claimed that the fact-checker had defamed him by accusing him of spreading misinformation.[37] During the court case, RMIT FactLab stated that Yemini had "failed to make any formal inquiries via appropriate channels with relevant persons" who had knowledge of the claims made in his story.[37] The case was dismissed in August 2023 when Yemini withdrew.[36][37] He stated that "[w]e had to withdraw due to the risk of losing the case and having to pay costs on top".[37]
Yemini is a far-right provocateur, who has been described byThe Sydney Morning Herald as having a pronounced dislike of trans-rights activists and climate science.[1][3][30] He is critical of what he sees as a middle-class, soft-left ideology, which he believes is supported by "woke elites", an entitled political class, and the mainstream media.[1] The politics of Avi Yemini's Australian branch ofRebel News have been described as "anti-leftist".[38]
Although Yemini grew up in an ultra-Orthodox family, he describes himself as not being Orthodox.[6] He only wears akippah when attending synagogue or being interviewed by the media.[6] Yemini has described himself as a "proudZionist" and as being "proudly anti-Islam".[6] He has described Islam as a "barbaric ideology", and Muslim countries as "Islamic shitholes".[39] At a 2018 demonstration against the imprisonment ofTommy Robinson, Yemini declared himself to be "the world's proudest Jewish Nazi", later saying that it was an "obvious joke".[1][33] Through the Australian Liberty Alliance, his collaboration with Robinson andRebel News, he has been affiliated with thecounter-jihad movement.[40]
Yemini lives inBerwick, Victoria, with his wife, a hairdresser. They met at a coffee shop in 2018.[1]
In 2015, he establishedRebel Media, a far-right outlet that regularly features global and domestic "stars" of the nationalist movement.
Far-right Twitter accounts come and go, often generating significant traction without any obvious relation to organised movements. As a stage of his reinvention of self after the EDL, its leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon ('Tommy Robinson') reinvented himself as a journalist, working for the Canadian far-right media company Rebel Media.
The Rebel Media, a far-right news organization, published articles by Canadianalt-right propagandists such as: "Want to sop cultural Marxist indoctrination? Cut public funding of universities" (Nicholas 2017); "Social justice is socialism in disguise" (Goldy 2016); and "How progressives use our kids for Marxist social experiments" (Goldy 2017).
Far-right Canadian media outlets, for instance, have bombarded its subscribers with all kinds of pro-Trump, racist and xenophobic dialogue, both before and after Trump's victory. Rebel Media, a popular far-right online media platform run byEzra Levant, a controversial Canadian far-right political activist, writer and broadcaster, has been an outright supporter of Trump, publishing countless extreme-right leaning articles on why to support him.
Beyond US-based far-right news websites such asBreitbart,Infowars andEpoch Times, other alternative online media outlets include Australia-basedXYZ andThe Unshackled, Canada-basedRebel News and UK-basedPoliticalite.com andPoliticalUK.co.uk, just to name a few, which operate as far-right metapolitical channels and counter-publics that strive to influence mainstream culture and discourse (Holt, 2019).
All four, including Robinson himself, were employees of The Rebel Media, a Toronto-based far-right website.
Jack Posobiec, a journalist with the far-right news outlet The Rebel, was the first to use the hashtag with a link to the hacked documents online, which was then shared more widely by WikiLeaks.
With politicians includingConservative heavyweightsAndrew Scheer andBrian Jean swearing off appearances and a raft of exits by prominent contributors, Ezra Levant's far-right video and commentary network The Rebel spent the last week in damage control, trying to distance itself from the extremist alt-right movement whose values many have alleged the site's content too often sympathized with.
Media related toAvi Yemini at Wikimedia Commons
