Left to right: Haleema Sadia, Emily Schrader, Christine Douglass-Williams and Goldie Ghamari formed the panel of the Dec. 4 event in Toronto called The Head of the Snake, the Islamic Republic of Iran. (photo by Dave Gordon)
American-Israeli journalist Emily Schrader believes it took years for Canada to designate the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps a terror group, as it did in June, because of “moral cowardice.”
She said other Western countries have “refuse[d] to stand up for moral values and their countries and civilizations” and that is “all the reason to vote for those who will protect democracies and freedoms in Canada.”
Schrader spoke in Toronto at the Lodzer Centre on Dec. 4. She was part of a panel with cofounder of TAG TV Haleema Sadia, Iranian-born Ottawa-area Member of Provincial Parliament Goldie Ghamari, and journalist Christine Douglass-Williams, in a talk called The Head of the Snake, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Schrader is an anchor on ILTV in Israel, co-hosts a panel show on Jewish News Syndicate, and is a contributor to ynetnews.com. In her opening remarks, she spoke of growing up “nominally pro-Israel” until her time at the University of Southern California as an undergrad student. “I didn’t realize how much people passionately hate Israel and Jews until I went to university,” she said.
Her first time “really seeing this visceral, irrational obsession with the Jewish state, which really is an obsession with Jews,” was during an Israel Apartheid Week, held by Students for Justice in Palestine. She said she was “irritated” by the “lies they spread across campus.” She joined Students for Israel in response to “this obsessive hatred towards Israel.”
“I always joke that Students for Justice in Palestine – the best thing they ever did was make me the biggest Zionist in the world,” said Schrader. “I would not be Israeli today if it was not for Students for Justice in Palestine. So, I guess I have them to thank for that.”
It was only after making aliyah that Schrader became aware of the historical connection between Iranians and Jews, going back to Cyrus the Great (circa 590 – 529 BCE), who allowed the Jewish exiles to return to the Holy Land. Iranians and Israelis are “really fighting the same evil,” she said.
In 2024, Schrader founded the Israeli Iranian Women’s Alliance (IIWA) to promote women’s advancement and democratic values.
She said Iran’s human rights violations have gotten worse. “There are more restrictions and gender apartheid than we have ever seen before.” She added: “The world is not paying attention because of everything else that’s been going on.”
Ghamari said Canada has been “courting the Hamas votes,” meaning immigrants from countries with “fundamentally different values than Canada.”
Schrader added that “the left overestimates the values of these voters” and “they are against the West – whether it’s a right or left government – so courting them is a fundamental mistake.”
“One of the best ways to support Iranians is to support our king,” Ghamari said of exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi – son of the late, deposed shah – who visited Israel in April 2023. “He is the one true voice of the Iranian people. He has 90% support,” she said.
A way to battle the anti-Israel forces is to build connections with like-minded allies, said Douglass-Williams. “They want the outreach just as much as the Jewish community.”
Ghamari seconded that: “All your support gave me the motivation to speak out and speak up.”
Sadia’s advice to win hearts and minds was to “multiply the voices” on social media.
Douglass-Williams alerted the audience that Venezuela has now sold a million hectares of land to the Iranian regime. “The IDF says they are developing weapons there that could reach America and Israel,” she said.
The Dec. 4 talk was organized by the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation, OneGlobalVoice, Allied Voices for Israel, Tafsik, and Canadians for Israel.
In an exclusive interview with the Jewish Independent, Schrader said the new Trump administration will be “excellent” on cracking down on Iran. She believes that moral-minded countries need to “de-recognize” the Islamic regime and ramp up sanctions. “It’s going to be a tall order,” she said of countries who have economic ties.
As for the wave of anti-Israel protests, they are primarily concerned with “support for terrorist organizations and an attempt to infiltrate and undermine Western values and the West,” Schrader told the JI.
If they cared about Palestinians, she said, they would protest the estimated 4,000 Palestinians killed in Syria by the Assad regime during that country’s civil war, she said. The Islamic regime’s “vast majority of the victims” are Arab and Muslim, but again, these protesters are silent.
Law enforcement, she believes, is to blame for allowing “multiple antisemitic assaults and attacks,” because “there’s zero accountability for these crimes that are being committed with a racist, hateful, pro-terror agenda.”
“You have to deter it, or it will only grow,” said Schrader. “And we see that happening. It’s a year after Oct. 7 and, I would argue, that it’s worse.”
Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world. His website is davegordonwrites.com.