Mr Fuck-Around is still Finding Out: the fancy restaurant mogul, who paraded swastikas and imitation Hezbollah flags, has pleaded guilty, as his wife tries some frantic damage control.
Embattled Nomad restaurant founder Al Yazbek has pleaded guilty to charges of knowingly displaying a Nazi symbol in public, after brandishing a sign bearing a swastika superimposed on an Israeli flag.
Appearing in Sydney’s Downing Centre court on Thursday morning, Mr Yazbek’s lawyer, Phillip English, told Magistrate Mark Whelan the case had attracted a great deal of media attention and handed up a large file which he said contained “negative emails” apparently addressed to his client.
Mr Yazbek is expected to be sentenced later on Thursday.
For all his ‘apologies’, he has a clear pattern of conduct.
Mr Yazbek has previously apologised “unequivocally” for his conduct, but that apology was undermined when The Australian revealed last week that he was questioned by police after acting suspiciously outside a Bondi synagogue in Sydney’s east in 2014, where his car was found loaded with “water bomb” balloons.
The next day, Mr Yazbek made his way into a rally for Israel in nearby Dover Heights where more than 10,000 members of Sydney’s Jewish community had gathered, before the restaurateur was spotted by security and removed by police.
Just like his heroes in Hamas, Yazbek is scurrying for cover and hiding behind his wife.
Rebecca Yazbek, the wife of embattled Nomad restaurant founder Al Yazbek, has criticised her husband for his offensive display of a Nazi symbol at a pro-Palestine rally, saying she was “furious with his actions and heartbroken by the harm they caused”.
In a message emailed to Nomad patrons, Ms Yazbek said her husband was no longer involved in the management of the business.
Nice try, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s buying it.
Especially not when his wife can hardly deny she knew about her husband’s anti-Semitic proclivities. She rode along for at least one of his previous attacks on Sydney Jews, although, when questioned by police, she claimed to be ‘waiting for her husband’.
Apparently it never occurred to her to ask what all those Nazi placards, Hezbollah flags and water bombs were doing in the boot. A man’s gotta have a hobby, it seems.
Sydney’s Jewish community seem to have taken more notice of her husband’s hobbies than she did.
Jewish community leaders were alarmed by Mr Yazbek’s conduct and claimed his display of a swastika superimposed on an Israeli flag was not a one-off event but that the high-profile restaurateur “has form” stretching back at least decade.
Public relations veteran Judi Hausmann said Mr Yazbek had asked her to do PR when he opened his Toko restaurant on Oxford St in Paddington and she had declined.
“Now I’m going to do your PR for free and make sure that all your clients know that Al Yazbek was the despicable creature arrested for defacing an Israeli flag with a swastika,” she wrote. “I hope you get a very long jail sentence. And that you enjoy the food in there!”
Hausmann was also formerly a foundation director of the Sydney Theatre Company, until she and other board members resigned in disgust after an onstage ‘keffiyeh protest’ by actors.
Meanwhile, the Finding Out just keeps on coming for the Yazbeks.
The Australian Restaurant and Cafe Association confirmed on Friday that the Nomad Group would be removed from its organisation. “There is no place in the hospitality industry for racism and anti-Semitism, and the ARCA board has begun the process, per the ARCA constitution, to revoke Nomad’s membership,” a spokesman said.
Oh dear, oh dear. And the mortgage to pay on that new swanky $11m mansion in Melbourne, too.
Oopsy daisy.
