A stunt designed to test possible anti-Semitism among takeaway shop staff has ended with a major newspaper apologising for the much-ridiculed set-up.<\/p>\n
The Daily Telegraph said in a joint statement on Monday it was sorry for causing distress to staff at Cairo Takeaway in Sydney’s inner west when it orchestrated a scenario to test whether staff would react negatively to an openly Jewish customer.<\/p>\n
In February 2025, Ofir Birenbaum entered the shop wearing a Star of David cap and pendant and ordered a drink as senior Telegraph reporter Danielle Gusmaroli waited outside.<\/p>\n
Gusmaroli then entered with a photographer and allegedly asked a staff member whether they had a problem with Birenbaum.<\/p>\n
After he and the Daily Telegraph staff left, a female staff member followed them out on to the street.<\/p>\n
“That is out and out intimidation,” the staff member can be heard telling Gusmaroli in a video on social media.<\/p>\n
Afterwards, the stunt quickly escalated with multiple lawsuits filed between the parties.<\/p>\n
Birenbaum sued the store for defamation after its social media accounts attacked him.<\/p>\n
However, the store filed a cross-claim in the Federal Court which the parties attempted to resolve through mediation.<\/p>\n
The joint statement says all legal disputes in the matter have been resolved on confidential terms.<\/p>\n
The statement acknowledges Birenbaum entered the store without notice to see if he would be treated differently “for the purposes of a news article”.<\/p>\n
Cairo Takeaway apologised unreservedly to Birenbaum for the false and defamatory statements made about him.<\/p>\n
The shop also acknowledged Birenbaum was polite when he entered to buy a drink.<\/p>\n
The Daily Telegraph, the flagship metro tabloid in News Corp, admitted its stunt caused distress to the staff and owner of the store and apologised to them for the distress.<\/p>\n
Cairo Takeaway, which has repeatedly expressed support for Palestine online, has made several political statements on their social media accounts.<\/p>\n
The store’s Instagram account has posts referring to mainstream media as “propaganda” and commenting multiple times on the US war with Iran.<\/p>\n
“All Australians should be able to safely express their racial or religious affiliation as well as debate issues in a respectful and dignified fashion,” the statement reads.<\/p>\n
“The parties hope that the fact of a resolution can be a positive example for others.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A stunt designed to test possible anti-Semitism among takeaway shop staff has ended with a major newspaper apologising…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-355204","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}