In 2005, Yanis Varoufakis was suspended from an SBS radio show for what the station called the promotion of anti-Jewish stereotypes.
Varoufakis, who at the time was an economics professor at the University of Athens, defended himself a few years later by stating that in his criticism of Israeli policies he was merely basing himself on reports in the Israeli daily Haaretz.
During his weekly broadcast at the Greek language radio program Australian of SBS on August 29, 2005, Varoufakis had claimed that Israel used the blockade of Gaza as part of “a strategy for retaining a large part of the West Bank” and called the West Bank security fence a “concrete monster”, according to his blog.
Varoufakis claimed that the then Howard government legislated to terminate his services from SBS.
SBS has since denied this.