Ex-Sky News Australia presenter: I support Israel because I ‘see right from wrong’

In sit-down interview after she was fired by network, Erin Molan tells Israeli TV she couldn’t stay silent after Oct. 7 but acknowledges she paid ‘heavy price’ for advocacy

Former Sky News Australia presenter Erin Molan speaks to Channel 12's Dana Weiss in an interview aired on December 22, 2024. (Screenshot; Channel 12, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)
Former Sky News Australia presenter Erin Molan speaks to Channel 12's Dana Weiss in an interview aired on December 22, 2024. (Screenshot; Channel 12, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

Australian TV presenter Erin Molan, who was fired by Sky News earlier this month, declined to say she was dismissed because of her outspoken support for Israel, but recalled the backlash — including threats against her family — that she has received over the last year as a result of her stances, in an interview with Channel 12 that aired on Saturday.

During the interview, which was filmed during her recent first visit to Israel, Molan explained that she became an outspoken supporter of Israel over the past 14 months following the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror onslaught in southern Israel which sparked the ongoing war against the terror group in the Gaza Strip due to her ability to “see right from wrong.”

“I can see good versus evil, and I don’t think it’s complicated at all,” she expounded. “I think that every death, every causality, every single life that’s been lost in the Middle East since October 7 lays squarely and solely on the hands of Hamas and the people who fund them.”

Molan was fired from her role as a politician news commentator for Sky News Australia earlier in December for reasons that were not made public, although the broadcast network defined the end of her tenure as “amicable.”

Molan declined to elaborate on the reasons behind her dismissal, but said in its wake that she was “just getting started” and that she would continue “to fight for every single hostage still held captive in Gaza.”

While on air, Molan had frequently used her program to show support for Israel, including by delivering a monologue against the United Nations days after the organization’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, in which she accused it of hypocrisy when it comes to Israeli women.

Asked by Channel 12’s Dana Weiss why she decided to start discussing Israel on her Sky News program, Molan said that the October 7, 2023 assault was the catalyst.

Former Sky News Australia presenter Erin Molan speaks to Channel 12’s Dana Weiss in an interview aired on December 22, 2024. (Screenshot; Channel 12, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

“How could anyone see what occurred on that day to children, to adults, to women, and not collectively as a world wrap their arms around Israel?” she asked rhetorically. Some 1,200 people were killed that day, most of them civilians, and 251 were seized as hostages as taken to Gaza by the Hamas-led terrorists who rampaged through Israel’s border communities.

Turning her attention across the border to the Palestinian enclave, Molan stressed: “I care no less about children in Gaza. No less.”

“But I understand that the cause of all their pain are the terrorists who started this,” she continued. “It’s not rocket science to understand where the terror comes from, where the evil comes from, where the death comes from. So how others can’t see that blows my mind.”

The heavy price of on-air advocacy

The stance Molan decided to take on air was not without consequences in her personal life, she told Channel 12, revealing that her six-year-old daughter became the target of threats from angry viewers.

“There’s one thing that I love and care about more than my job, more than doing what’s right, more than being the kind of person that I want to be and that I was raised to be, and that’s my little girl,” she said. “To think that I was putting her in danger, the thought of that terrified me.”

Despite this fear, Molan said she decided to continue to talk about Israel on her program, as she realized that “the thought of not speaking, the thought of the kind of world that if we don’t speak becomes normal scares me so much more.”

While she acknowledged that she “paid a heavy price” for her public support of Israel, Molan stopped short of suggesting it was the reason behind her dismissal from Sky News.

“I won’t go too much into the detail of that, but they are not antisemitic at Sky. I’d say that absolutely,” she said.

Asked by Weiss about the support, or lack of it, for Israel in Australia, Molan said she believes that there are more people who view the events as she does, but that “a lot of people are silent.”

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters gathered at the Sydney Opera House, which was planned to be illuminated in the colors of the Israeli flag following the October 7 Hamas atrocities in Israel, while police advised the Jewish community to stay away, in Sydney, New South Wales, on October 9, 2023. (AP/Rick Rycroft)

“I genuinely believe that the vast majority of people in Australia stand with Israel, I genuinely believe that,” she stressed. “But they’re the quiet ones. And that’s my issue…when you cower in fear when it comes to particularly this issue, they win.”

Touching on her criticism of the United Nations over its inaction regarding the female victims of Hamas’s terror assault, Molan shared that the images she saw from that day were painful to her in a personal way, as well.

“I’ve been in two very violent relationships in my life, and I’ve never spoken about them until very recently,” she said. “I have been dragged into my car by my hair, by my partner at the time. And when I looked at those images on October 7 and I saw women being dragged by their hair, that really hit home to me.

“So when I see places like the UN who don’t give a shit about anything that happened to any women in Israel on that day, let alone the women who are still captive, then I tell them to screw their day of whatever it is that they’re calling it this week to try and make it look like they care,” she added. “They don’t care.”

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