Avi Yemini

Avraham Shalom Yemini ( Waks; ) is an Australian-Israeli far-right provocateur and commentator. Since 2020 he has worked as the Australian correspondent for Rebel News, a Canadian far-right website. Yemini has been involved in numerous cases of litigation, initiated both by him and against him.

Yemini grew up in a large family in Melbourne, Victoria, and attended various Orthodox Jewish schools in Melbourne and overseas. and grew up in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda East. Yemini is a younger brother of Manny Waks.

Yemini attended Yeshivah 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 to heroin. He spent the next two years in rehab, foster homes and crisis care. After returning to Australia, Yemini opened IDF Training, a gym in Caulfield, Victoria. The gym, known for training Krav Maga, was at the time described as largest training centre for the martial art in Australia. In 2016 he opened a second gym in the Melbourne central business district. In 2018, Yemini sold the gyms.

In 2026, Yemini tried to form a party called Free Palestine party for the 2026 Victorian state election, in a bid to attract votes from left-wing voters and redirect preferences of votes the party receives to right-wing parties. The electoral commission responded by confirming it had no authority to prevent parties from adopting misleading names, and in June the commission began the process of registering "Free Palestine" as a political party. In July 2026 The Age reported that the Allan government was set to introduce legislation by the end of the month to abolish group voting tickets.

Social media bans In April 2016, the Facebook page for Yemini's IDF Training gym was banned for three days for sharing an antisemitic post with the hashtag "saynotoracism". Yemini said he had shared the post to raise awareness of the intolerance faced by the Jewish community. The decision came after Yemini doxxed journalist Osman Faruqi, resulting in Faruqi receiving abusive messages and death threats from Yemini's followers.

In September 2020, two of Yemini's Facebook pages were banned following inquiries by Gizmodo Australia.

Legal issues

In 2016, one of Yemini's brothers, Manny Waks, sued him for defamation after Yemini claimed that Waks and their father were harbouring a known paedophile in the family home. Waks dropped the lawsuit after Yemini apologised a few months later. 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. In June 2022 Victoria Police issued an apology acknowledging that Yemini had been wrongly arrested on multiple occasions while reporting for Rebel News. In March 2021, he applied for accreditation to allow him access to the press galleries of both houses of the parliament and the areas surrounding the buildings. Yemini subsequently lost the case.

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. The case was settled in October 2021. Rebel News agreed to remove the offending image of Garde-Wilson and issue an apology stating that no one had made any death threats. In June of that year, Twitter was ordered to hand over IP addresses associated with the account. After Twitter handed over IP addresses associated with the account, YouTuber Friendlyjordies interviewed Jeremy Maluta who stated that the account belonged to them.

In August 2022, Yemini was denied entry to New Zealand due to a 2019 criminal conviction for assaulting his ex-wife. Yemini claimed the decision was due to an article in The New Zealand Herald that described him and fellow content creator Rukshan Fernando as "Australian conspiracy commentators". Yemini was allowed entry to New Zealand in 2023.

In 2023, Yemini sued Facebook fact-checker RMIT FactLab after it debunked claims made by him in a story about the Shrine of Remembrance's CEO. He claimed that the fact-checker had defamed him by accusing him of spreading misinformation. The case was dismissed in August 2023 when Yemini withdrew.

Although Yemini grew up in an ultra-Orthodox family, he describes himself as not being Orthodox. At a 2018 demonstration against the imprisonment of Tommy Robinson, Yemini declared himself to be "the world's proudest Jewish Nazi", later saying that it was an "obvious joke".

In April 2025, fact-checking organization FakeReporter reported that Yemini was one of 30 prominent Twitter accounts promoting content from Gazawood, an Israeli Twitter account which attempts to discredit Palestinians by claiming they are exaggerating or faking their casualties.

Personal life Yemini lives in Berwick, Victoria, with his wife, a hairdresser. They met at a coffee shop in 2018.