Caroline D\u2019Amore, left, Hussein Aboubakr Mansour and Emily Austin spoke to an audience of more than 550 at Congregation Schara Tzedeck Nov. 26 for the event Women United. <\/i>(photo by Kyle Berger)<\/i><\/p>\n
Some 550 Vancouver women packed the sanctuary at Congregation Schara Tzedeck Nov. 26 for Women United, a talk arranged by Jewish National Fund, Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, Stand With Us Canada and Schara Tzedeck, and sponsored by the Diamond Foundation. Jewish women were encouraged to bring their non-Jewish friends, and Federation reported that 40% of attendants were non-Jewish.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea was to bring together a diverse range of women from all faiths, to engage in dialogue and empower us to speak up with bravery,\u201d said Megan Laskin, who initiated the concept for the event. She noted that there are just 15 million Jews worldwide \u201cbut we are the victims of half of the hate crimes that occur. Our pain, our fear and our loneliness are very real and very deep.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Emily Austin, 22, an American social media influencer who is the host of a National Basketball Association podcast called The Hoop Chat w\/ Emily Austin<\/i>, was the first speaker. She described how she took a deep dive into Jewish history to understand it better. \u201cOne thing Israel will always have on its side is facts,\u201d she noted. \u201cThe Palestinians have truly sad videos with no facts, but people tend to overlook the facts because of the emotional nature of the narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n Austin delivered some of those facts to the audience, refuting the Palestinians\u2019 claims of genocide. \u201cGo to UN.org and you\u2019ll see that their population has quadrupled in the last 20 years,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In discussing land claims, she said, \u201cthis is not about land. It\u2019s about Jew hatred.\u201d She argued that, when Israel left Gaza in 2005, the Gaza Strip was a prosperous area filled with resorts, caf\u00e9s and nightclubs. \u201cThey turned it into a terrorist capital,\u201d she said of Hamas.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Austin urged members of the audience to educate themselves so they can address false claims with confidence. \u201cThere are no excuses to not be a voice when we have the facts. If you\u2019ve not been vocal, please be vocal now,\u201d she said. \u201cSilence is compliance, and those people who want Jews dead are not being silent.\u201d<\/p>\n Austin warned that this conflict is not just about Israel, or even just about Jews. \u201cWhen they say kill the infidels, the West is next. The common denominator is hatred, and it\u2019s a disease,\u201d said Austin.<\/p>\n Caroline D\u2019Amore, 39, a single mom, social media influencer and the entrepreneur behind Pizza Girl pizza sauce, was the second speaker. She described herself as \u201ca not-so-subtle, pink-haired, Malibu Italian chick\u201d and a high school dropout. She said learning about the Holocaust and reading Anne Frank\u2019s diary made a deep impression on her, but that she was unaware of antisemitism until Oct. 7, after which she started seeing it everywhere, and felt compelled to speak out.<\/p>\n D\u2019Amore said she published a video expressing her dismay and a fact that was obvious to her. \u201cThe terrorists are the bad guys. There is no context on this earth that could justify rape and murder,\u201d she told the audience.<\/p>\n The video went viral and D\u2019Amore received hundreds of messages from mothers who were so relieved that a non-Jew could see what was going on.<\/p>\n \u201cI could feel their pain, sadness and fear,\u201d D\u2019Amore said. \u201cSo many people are saying nothing, or shaming Jewish people for feeling this fear right now. Jews are being told to \u2018stop playing the victim,\u2019 and even I get accused of playing \u2018the Zionist victim card.\u2019 What I want to say to my accusers is \u2018how dare you<\/i>?\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very clear to me that this is about good versus evil,\u201d she continued. \u201cI dove right in and started screaming about this at the top of my lungs, and though I\u2019ve been attacked online for over a month now, I\u2019m still here, proudly showing my face. I plan on being on the right side of history, which means standing up against terror in the Middle East and against those who are justifying what happened on Oct. 7. My promise is that I\u2019ll continue to use my voice to stand up against evil, to stand up for humans who are suffering, to speak up against terrorism, and to encourage and empower others to use their voices.\u201d<\/p>\n D\u2019Amore said the Jewish community was her inspiration. \u201cYou guys find the light and it shines so damn bright,\u201d she said. \u201cYou come together in the most beautiful ways, and it\u2019s inspired me in ways I\u2019ve never known possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Hussein Aboubakr Mansour, the third speaker, addressed the audience by Zoom from his home in Washington, DC. Now the director of the Endowment for Middle East Truth\u2019s Program for Emerging Democratic Voices from the Middle East, he was born in Cairo, into an environment that he said inspired him and his peers to hate Jews and become jihadists.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cFrom an early age, there was a story I heard everywhere, that there are people who epitomize wickedness, want to destroy Arabs and Muslims and steal our land, and want to destroy everything that is good and sacred. Those people are the Jews and Zionism is the embodiment of that ideal,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Curious, he started teaching himself Hebrew and learning about Jewish history. That led him on a long journey that transformed his relationship with the world and turned him into an ardent Zionist and supporter of the Jewish people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n His metamorphosis and his insistence on publishing, blogging and talking about what he learned, has cost him dearly. He was disowned by his family, was arrested on suspicion of being a Zionist spy, and was tortured in Egyptian jails before receiving political asylum in the United States in 2012.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI spend every day of my life thinking about how to help end this epidemic of antisemitism that\u2019s been going on for so long,\u201d he said. While the massacres on Oct. 7 destroyed much of his optimism, Mansour said he still believes a change for the better is possible.<\/p>\n He ended his remarks by saying that he is proud to be a friend of the Jewish people and of the state of Israel. \u201cAnd I have no doubt that I\u2019m not the only Arab who feels this way \u2013 I\u2019m just ahead of the curve,\u201d he said. \u201cThere will be more who will see this truth.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lauren Kramer<\/b>, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Caroline D\u2019Amore, left, Hussein Aboubakr Mansour and Emily Austin spoke to an audience of more than 550 at Congregation Schara Tzedeck Nov. 26 for the event Women United. (photo by Kyle Berger) Some 550 Vancouver women packed the sanctuary at Congregation Schara Tzedeck Nov. 26 for Women United, a talk arranged by Jewish National Fund, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43023,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[22840,801,22842,22843,22841,22844,1887,4330,3021],"class_list":["post-43021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-allies","tag-antisemitism","tag-caroline-damore","tag-emily-austin","tag-hussein-aboubakr-mansour","tag-influencers","tag-internet","tag-israel","tag-women"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}