Australian TV personality Erin Molan at Schara Tzedeck in Vancouver March 19. <\/i>(photo by Pat Johnson)<\/i><\/p>\n
Security was tighter than usual at Congregration Schara Tzedeck when Australian media personality Erin Molan spoke to Vancouver\u2019s Jewish community March 19.<\/p>\n
The non-Jewish commentator has become a lightning rod for anti-Israel activists since becoming a vocal voice in support of Zionism and Jews, particularly after Oct. 7, 2023. She is dumbfounded by the controversy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you said to me two years ago, there\u2019s going to be a terror attack, Hamas will slaughter 1,200 people, they will take hostages, they will burn children \u2026 you are going to come out very strongly and publicly and condemn those actions and you\u2019re going to support the victims of those atrocities and that\u2019s going to be controversial and you will be in the minority, I would have said you are dreaming, there is no chance in hell,\u201d Molan told the audience. \u201cBut here we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since that October day, Molan has lost the four jobs she held in Australian journalism \u2013 her main gig as a commentator on Sky News Australia, a radio position, a column in Sydney\u2019s Daily Telegraph<\/i> and a regular magazine spot. Molan has not explicitly said she was fired for her pro-Israel views.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPure coincidence, of course,\u201d was her response to a direct question put to her by Amir Epstein, executive director of Tafsik, the organization that brought her on a cross-Canada tour.<\/p>\n In February, she became host of 69 X Minutes, a news program conceived and funded by Elon Musk, which airs on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.<\/p>\n Molan received a loud ovation for her comments on US President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cYou might love him, you might hate him,\u201d she said. \u201cWould I want him to marry my daughter? No. Do I think that in some ways he is the right person for this time given the alternative? Absolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n She said Trump is shaking up a situation that demands new approaches.<\/p>\n \u201cAt least he\u2019s throwing something different out there,\u201d she said. \u201cHow many two-state solutions do you want to give the Palestinians? How many chances do you want to give? What are we up to, eight? Eight more chances for the same people that, at the last ceasefire, came on TV seconds after the ceasefire began and said, just FYI, we will do Oct. 7 again at the first available opportunity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t keep doing the same thing,\u201d she continued. \u201cThat\u2019s insanity.\u201d<\/p>\n Her assertion that Trump\u2019s disruptive tactics are right for the time and place come in part from watching, she said, every second of available recorded footage from Oct. 7. Many of the perpetrators wore body cameras, in some cases livestreaming their attacks.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought I understood how depraved they were, well prior,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019d seen enough, I\u2019d heard enough, I knew that they were probably as low as you could get. Watching the raw vision [recorded footage] gave me the next-level understanding of who you are dealing with and \u2026 I left there saying, there is no way you can coexist with those people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI watched a video of a dad jumping out of a window with a 4-year-old under his arm and then maybe a 6-year-old running beside him,\u201d she recounted. \u201cJust that fear on his face that \u2026 he knew that they were coming. He was not going to be able to do anything, but he was doing whatever he could. The terrorists killed him, then went to the fridge with two kids covered in blood, shaking, [having] just watched their dad killed and then pulling drinks out and they\u2019re laughing. I watched their faces as they hacked the head off a young man. That, to me, is what I can\u2019t ever forget, the joy that they derived in what they were doing. Two little girls and a little boy being burnt alive \u2013 they shot their parents and then they burnt them alive. I just don\u2019t think you can keep pretending that this is just a dispute over land or this is just two countries that don\u2019t really get along well. No, there are not two sides to this. They are evil, depraved, bloodthirsty murderers who will never, ever stop. So, whatever the solution is moving forward, it cannot have Hamas in existence at all and, from there, I don\u2019t know, but I think you\u2019ve got to try something different.\u201d<\/p>\n Molan\u2019s experiences with domestic partner violence have influenced her approach to the Oct. 7 attacks \u2013 and provided a contrast between the way she, as an Australian woman, is perceived differently from Israeli women.<\/p>\n \u201cI was in a couple of very violent relationships that resulted in me being hospitalized a lot,\u201d she said, noting that she shared the story for the first time publicly only a few months ago.<\/p>\n When Molan did so, she said, \u201call the feminists in Australia \u2026 were public and effusive in their sorrow and their praise for my bravery, for sharing.\u201d<\/p>\n She said, \u201cThese were the same people who deny what happened to Israeli and Jewish women on Oct. 7, the same people who have not said a word about any of it. [They are] completely OK with Hamas raping, slaughtering, killing women.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n She experienced firsthand the very different reactions to her, \u201can Irish Catholic girl,\u201d and to the rapes and murders of Israeli women, she said.<\/p>\n While she said everyone should be speaking up in support of Israel and against Hamas and global antisemitism, she had particularly harsh words for Islamic community members and leaders, not least because Islamic extremism hurts Muslims, she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThey should be at the forefront of this fight,\u201d she said. \u201cWhere are they? That\u2019s what\u2019s really disappointed me in this space. There\u2019s the odd one or two and they are incredible and they\u2019re brave and they\u2019re powerful, but \u2026 this was a perfect opportunity for [Muslim community organizations] to come out and say, \u2018That\u2019s not who we are, that doesn\u2019t represent us or our religion.\u2019 But, instead, they tried to downplay it, they tried to make it OK, they tried to normalize it.\u201d<\/p>\n Molan has been critical of Canada\u2019s now-former prime minister Justin Trudeau, as well as leaders in her own country and elsewhere, who she says have allowed the bar to be lowered on acceptable discourse.<\/p>\n She cited the example of a hate rally at the Sydney Opera House, hours after the atrocities in Israel, during which people expressed antisemitic chants and threats.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I were in power, if I were the leader of a nation and that had occurred on my watch, you could not have held me back in terms of what action I would have taken,\u201d she said, adding that this was a moment when hateful and potentially violent people were gauging what would be accepted and what would not be accepted in society.<\/p>\n At that point, Molan said, leaders should have come down hard and police should have acknowledged that support for terrorism and incitement of violence against identifiable groups is illegal, freedom of speech notwithstanding. In Australia, Canada and elsewhere, she said, that did not happen.<\/p>\n She credited the Jewish community worldwide for their collective reactions to the challenges they face.<\/p>\n \u201cYou would be justified in being the most hateful people in history,\u201d she said. \u201cYou would be justified in having hearts full of hate and no one could ever judge you for it. Every time you gather, all you say is, \u2018Bring them home.\u2019 That\u2019s it. Every gathering I\u2019ve seen of Jewish people since Oct. 7, the only focus there has been \u2018Bring them home. Bring our people home.\u2019 The other side, every gathering is \u2018Intifada,\u2019 \u2018River to the sea,\u2019 \u2018Death to Jews.\u2019 How can the world not see the stark difference between these two groups of people?\u201d<\/p>\n Schara Tzedeck\u2019s Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt opened the event with a prayer for the hostages.<\/p>\n Mijal BenDori, vice-president, community planning, partnerships and innovation, of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, thanked the Vancouver Police Department, hired security and the community volunteer group Bitachon for keeping British Columbia\u2019s Jews safe.<\/p>\n The event was co-sponsored by Federation, Schara Tzedeck and Tafsik, a new national organization that Epstein said targets \u201cthe Islamists, the Marxists, the communists, the keffiyeh Karens, the Jew-haters.\u201d<\/p>\n His group, he said, has a number of projects in development, including an app to identify and remove anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hate graffiti; a group called LGBTJew, to provide a place for queer Zionists; and a support group for people who have been alienated by their Jewish families for their support of Israel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Australian TV personality Erin Molan at Schara Tzedeck in Vancouver March 19. (photo by Pat Johnson) Security was tighter than usual at Congregration Schara Tzedeck when Australian media personality Erin Molan spoke to Vancouver\u2019s Jewish community March 19. The non-Jewish commentator has become a lightning rod for anti-Israel activists since becoming a vocal voice in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46223,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[801,23918,22729,2530,22725,8561],"class_list":["post-46221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-antisemitism","tag-erin-molan","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-media","tag-oct-7","tag-violence-against-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\/46221","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=46221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}