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Pro-Israel News Anchor Fired From Sky News Australia Vows to Be ‘Loudest Member of the Silent Majority’

Television presenter Erin Molan at a press conference during a visit to Penshurst Girls School in Sydney, Wednesday, December 8, 2021. Photo: AAPIMAGE via Reuters Connect

An Australian news anchor who has repeatedly expressed support for Israel on air has been fired from hosting a Friday night news program on Sky News Australia.

Erin Molan, 41, presented the final episode of her evening show “Erin” on Nov. 29, and her firing was announced days later. She was not able to return on air to say farewell to her viewers. Sky News thanked Molan for her work in a statement to Australia’s Daily Mail but did not specify the reason for her firing.

“Erin has been a fantastic member of the Sky News team over the past three years, and has worked incredibly hard for her viewers, passionately advocating on the issues close to her heart,” the news network said. “We would like to thank her for her contribution to the network.”

Molan is the daughter of the late Major General Jim Molan, an Australian senator who was an avid supporter of Israel and a strong advocate for Australia-Israel ties. She grew up in Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population in the world, and joined Sky News Australia in July 2022. Her morning show on Australia’s largest radio station, Southern Cross Austereo, with comedians David Hughes and Ed Kavalee, was canceled in August.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Molan has made numerous comments on her show “Erin” in support of the Jewish state and its military actions targeting the terrorist organization controlling the Gaza Strip that orchestrated the deadly massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. She has also received death threats for backing the Jewish state.

On Friday, Sky News Australia host Sharri Markson denied that Molan was fired by the network because of her strong support for Israel. Markson wrote on X it is “categorically untrue” that her colleague was sacked by Sky News Australia “because of her Zionism.”

Nevertheless, Molan on Thursday posted a nine-minute video on X in which she talked largely about her unwavering support for Israel, and how she will keep defending the country publicly even after being fired from Sky News Australia. The single mother said that while her show “Erin” became her “purpose” and “passion,” that’s “done now, but I am not. In fact, I’m just getting started.”

She then started listing off the topics close to her heart that she refuses to stay silent about, including “fighting for every single hostage still captive in Gaza hundreds of days in, whilst a fair chunk of the world seemingly not only allows their captors completely off the hook, but praises them, worships them, idolizes them, rewards them.”

“Pressure Hamas? Oh God, no. Don’t be silly; they’re just terrorists, let them be,” she sarcastically added. “Pressure Israel, that’s it. The only democracy in the Middle East fighting bloodthirsty killers on multiple fronts on behalf of the entire world, desperately trying to get their people back, including babies, while simultaneously trying to protect the rest of their citizens from the same fate. Yes, demonize them. They are the problem. What a plan, huh? Brilliant. And how many people fell for it and continue to.”

Molan also discussed continuing to advocate for the innocent children in Gaza suffering under Hamas rule, and further condemned the terrorist organization that perpetrated the Oct. 7 massacre last year. She criticized the “deafening silence” for the women who were killed, raped, and kidnapped by Hamas-led terrorist during the Oct. 7 attack, and the “unfathomable support for evil amongst young people in the West who are so deluded regarding where their empathy belongs.”

“I’m here to be the loudest member of the silent majority that I can be,” she said. “I’m not from Israel. I’m not Jewish … I have no skin in this game. But you see, I do. We all do. It doesn’t matter how far away we are. When hate is allowed to fester, we all lose … And if I back down now and sit idly by, then I am just as much to blame as the fool waving a Hamas flag at a bogus protest that has nothing to do with Palestinian lives.”

“Terrorism and extremism hurts all of us,” she said in conclusion. “That is why I will not stop.”

During one segment on “Erin” in September, Molan told viewers: “If you care about innocent civilians everywhere, then you must stand with Israel. Imagine the Middle East without terror. Hard to, isn’t it? Imagine every cent in Gaza going towards health and education, instead of terror tunnels and bombs … imagine peace. There’s only one side fighting for that right now and their victory in the Middle East is the only one that will ever achieve it.”

In October, after the premeditated and violent attack on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam, Molan said: “If it doesn’t hurt you when you look at the footage from Amsterdam, you are not human.”

The post Pro-Israel News Anchor Fired From Sky News Australia Vows to Be ‘Loudest Member of the Silent Majority’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Trump Administration Impounds $250 Million From UCLA, Citing Antisemitism

US President Donald Trump points a finger as he delivers remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, July 31, 2025. Photo: Kent Nishimura via Reuters Connect

The Trump administration has confiscated a nine-figure sum in federal funds from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), citing numerous complaints of antisemitism on the campus — some of which the institution recently settled in a multi-million-dollar lawsuit.

The federal government impounded, according to various reports, some $250 million to punish the university’s alleged exposing Jewish students to discrimination by refusing to intervene when civil rights violations transpired or failing to correct a hostile environment after the fact. The move comes only a couple days after UCLA agreed to donate $2.33 million to a consortium of Jewish civil rights organizations to resolve an antisemitism complaint filed by three students and an employee.

On Thursday, UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk, a descendant of Jews who left Germany in the 1930s, said the loss off funds is “a loss for America” while arguing that it will not help in addressing antisemitism.

“With this decision, hundreds of grants may be lost, adversely affecting the lives of and life-changing work of UCLA researchers, faculty, and staff. In its notice to us, the federal government claims antisemitism and bias as the reasons,” Frenk wrote in a message to the campus community. “This far-reaching penalty of defunding live-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination.”

He continued, “We share the goal of eradicating antisemitism across society. Antisemitism has no place on our campus, nor does any form of discrimination. We recognize that we can improve, and I am committed to doing so. Confronting the scourge of antisemitism effectively calls for thoughtfulness, commitment, and sustained effort — and UCLA has taken robust actions to make our campus a safe and welcoming environment for all students.”

Many antisemitic incidents occurred at UCLA before the institution was ultimately sued and placed in the crosshairs of the Trump administration.

Just five days after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, as previously reported by The Algemeiner, anti-Zionist protesters chanted “Itbah El Yahud” at Bruin Plaza, which means “slaughter the Jews” in Arabic. Other incidents included someone’s tearing a chapter page out of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America, titled “Loudmouth Jew,” and leaving it outside the home of a UCLA faculty member, as well as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) staging a disturbing demonstration in which its members cudgeled a piñata, to which a picture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s face was glued, while shouting “beat the Jew.”

Later, pro-Hamas activists erected a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on campus during the final weeks of the 2024 spring semester and chanted “death to the Jews,” set up illegal checkpoints through which no one could pass unless they denounced Israel, and ordered campus security assigned there by the university to ensure that no Jews entered it. UCLA allegedly refused to clear the encampment despite knowing what was happening there, prompting allegations that it allowed a “Jewish Exclusion Zone” on its property. The antisemitism complaint that was settled earlier this week argued that the university violated its own policies as well as “the basic guarantee of equal access to educational facilities that receive federal funding” and other equal protection laws.

On Tuesday, the university announced that it agreed to pay $6.45 million in total to settle the lawsuit.

“Antisemitism harassment and other forms of intimidation are antithetical to our values and have no place at the University of California,” UC Board of Regents Chair Janet Reilly said in a statement. “We have been clear about where we have fallen short, and we are committed to doing better moving forward. Today’s settlement reflects a critically important goal that we share with the plaintiffs: to foster a safe, secure, and inclusive environment for all members of our community and ensure that there is no room for antisemitism anywhere on campus.”

On the same day, the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division ruled that UCLA’s response to antisemitic incidents constituted violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

“Our investigation into the University of California system has found concerning evidence of systemic antisemitism at UCLA that demands severe accountability from the institution,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “This disgusting breach of civil rights against students will not stand: the [Department of Justice] will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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Michigan Senate Candidate Sits Down for Interview With Anti-Israel Streamer

Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed Launches Bid (Source: WLNS 6 News/Youtube)

Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed Launches Bid (Source: WLNS 6 News/Youtube)

Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat running for the US Senate in Michigan, recently appeared on the platform of controversial anti-Israel social media personality Hasan Piker, raising questions about the candidate’s positions on the Jewish state.

El-Sayed, a physician and former Detroit health director, is mounting a 2026 progressive campaign for the open Senate seat in Michigan. His appearance on Piker’s stream, which aired on YouTube and Twitch, covered a range of topics from health care to foreign policy. But his decision to appear on a stream by Piker, who has an extensive history of repudiating Israel and defending the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, has drawn scrutiny. 

The two did not talk in depth about Israel or the ongoing war in Gaza during the interview. However, Piker stated that anti-Israel politicians can now succeed in American politics as opposed to previous generations, pointing to the ascendance of New York City Democratic mayoral primary winner Zohran Mamdani, who has made activism against the Jewish state a cornerstone of his political career. Piker encouraged El-Sayed not to “back away” from condemnations of Israel, claiming that “a lot of people agree” with the far left on the issue. 

Piker has an extensive history of repudiating Israel as an “apartheid state” and defending atrocities committed against its civilians. In a 2024 livestream, Piker minimized sexual assaults committed against Israeli women at the hands of Hamas, saying “it doesn’t matter if rapes f—king happened on Oct. 7.” He has also defended violence by both Hamas and the Houthis, a Yemen-based Islamist terror group, as legitimate “resistance,” and said he doesn’t “have an issue with” Hezbollah, which pummeled Israel with an unremitting barrage of missiles and rockets from southern Lebanon in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Jewish state.

El-Sayed has also positioned himself as a fierce critic of Israel. The progressive champion was a prominent supporter of the “Uncommitted movement,” a coalition of Democratic officials which refused to support the 2024 Kamala Harris presidential campaign over her support for Israel. However, El-Sayed later clarified that he would support Harris over Donald Trump in the general election.  

El-Sayed has been especially critical of Israel’s war in Gaza. On Oct. 21, 2023, two weeks after the Hamas slaughter of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel, the progressive politician accused Israel of “genocide.” He also compared Israel’s defensive military operations to the Hamas terrorist group’s conduct on Oct. 7, writing, “You can both condemn Hamas terrorism AND Israel’s murder since.”

In comments to Politico, El-Sayed criticized Democrats’ handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, arguing that they should become the “party of peace and justice” and said that they “ought not to be the party sending bombs and money to foreign militaries to drop bombs on other people’s kids in their schools and their hospitals.” He called on Democrats to stop supporting military aid for Israel, saying “we should be spending that money here at home.”

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German Foreign Minister Tones Down Palestinian Recognition Talk on West Bank Trip

Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul gestures next to a member of clergy during the visit to the town of Taybeh, a Christian village in the West Bank, Aug. 1, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ali Sawafta

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul sought to tone down previous comments about his country’s position on Palestinian statehood during a trip to the West Bank on Friday, saying Germany had no immediate plans to recognize a Palestinian state.

Wadephul’s comment followed sharp criticism from Israeli officials over his earlier suggestion, before he left for the trip, that Germany could respond to any unilateral Israeli actions with recognition of a Palestinian state.

Far-right Israeli government minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had written on X: “80 years after the Holocaust, and Germany returns to supporting Nazism.”

After meeting Israel’s foreign minister, prime minister, and president on Thursday evening, Wadephul explained on Friday that Germany did not plan to recognize a Palestinian state immediately, “as that is one of the final steps to be taken” as part of a two-state solution.

Wadephul’s attempt to clarify his remarks highlights Germany’s longstanding difficulty in taking a clear position on the issue, caught between growing international pressure on Israel amid the Gaza war and Germany’s own post-Holocaust commitment to ensuring Israel’s security.

He called on Israel to ensure safe access for United Nations agencies to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, saying the current restrictions were worsening the crisis.

“The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza must end now,” Wadephul said, stressing that aid distribution through the UN needed to resume without obstacles.

He said Germany would provide an additional 5 million euros ($5.7 million) to the UN World Food Program to support bakeries and soup kitchens and fund a field hospital in Gaza City.

Asked about Israeli concerns that aid could be diverted by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, Wadephul acknowledged that misuse could not be fully ruled out but said it was no reason to block relief efforts.

“The best way to prevent Hamas from misusing supplies is to deliver more aid and ensure full coverage for the population,” he said.

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