NSW Health anti-Semitism scandal: To end hatred on the streets, politicians and Muslims need to act now

When a doctor, nurse or any other medical professional enters a hospital, a surgery or a clinic to treat another human, they have a moral obligation to provide equal care to that person, regardless of whether they are rich or poor, black or white, Christian, Muslim or any other faith.

In the NSW medical system, Jewish people fear they cannot rely on this fundamental human expectation.

A video recording of two nurses from Bankstown Hospital - in the heart of Muslim western Sydney - wishing death upon Israelis was shocking not just for the murderous content, but the casual delivery.

Hiding her hair, not her prejudice, a hijab-wearing Sarah Abu Lebdeh told Israeli online poster Max Veifer, who specialises in exposing Jew haters: “When your time comes, I want you to remember my face so you can understand that you will die the most disgusting death.”

The conversation, which has already spread around the world, raises a deeply uncomfortable question for Australia: why do some immigrants carry conflict from their ancestral homelands to their new nation, and how can they be convinced to embrace the tolerance that has left Australia largely peaceful for 237 years?

Doctors have been warning for months that anti-Semitism is on the rise in hospitals. They were mostly ignored, operating in an industry that has long welcomed overseas workers.

Meanwhile, staff in the state-run health systems become more brazenly anti-Israeli in social media posts. A survey last year found almost half of Victorian Jewish medical workers and students hid their Jewish identity to avoid discrimination. A Hamas wish-list for medical supplies was found in the Melbourne Royal Children’s Hospital.

Warning sign

In hindsight, Australia missed the warning signs on October 9, 2023, when hundreds of Middle East men defiled the Sydney Opera House, a building of beauty, culture and openness, with a celebration of murder, rape and mayhem against the Jewish state two days earlier.

Horrified Jews predicted anti-Semitism would be unleashed without strong leadership. What followed was a year-and-a half of pandering to the anti-Israeli lobby by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who shifted Australian support towards the Palestinians to protect Labor support in Muslim-heavy electorates in Sydney and Melbourne.

Eventually, after synagogues were firebombed, swastikas appeared weekly on Jewish homes and students could no longer walk safely through sandstone universities wearing a yarmulke, the Government agreed to more protections.

New law

Changes to Federal law last week introduced five- and seven-year penalties for threatening violence against specific nationalities, if the prosecution can prove the targets would reasonably fear the threat would be carried out. The legal test was reduced from requiring proof of a clear intention to threaten someone to recklessly doing so.

The Bankstown nurses could be charged under the new law. They are being investigated by a NSW police anti-Semitism taskforce created under Labor premier, Chris Minns, who has demonstrated that it is possible to fight anti-Jewish hatred from the left.

Firing a couple of low-level government employees will not solve the problem. Jewish leader Alex Ryvchin called Wednesday’s video the “tip of the iceberg”.

Political leadership is needed, especially in the suburbs popular with Australia’s 800,000 Muslims, where a powerful sense of anti-Western grievance allowed an Afghan immigrant such as Rashad Nadir, one of the Bankstown nurses, to boast to a stranger that he dispatches Israeli patients to hell, using the Arabic word.

“You have no idea how many come to this hospital,” he said. “I send to Jahannam.”

The nurse later said he was joking.

Muslim leadership

When prime ministers, premiers and other senior politicians take clear stands against violence, all arms of government notice, including police officers, prosecutors, university administrators, senior public servants and judges.

The responsibility to convince Muslims that talking about killing Jews isn’t funny does not fall only on politicians, though.

For years, Jewish and Muslim leaders have regularly talked in private, seeking to build trust.

Over the past year these conversations have died away, according to the Jewish side, apparently because the war in Gaza made Muslim leaders wary of even talking to the Jews because of anger among their own congregations.

The loss of personal interactions between the two groups was a loss for everyone.

Jewish leaders such as Mr Ryvchin, whose former Sydney house was attacked a three weeks ago, did not invade Gaza. They, like every other Jew in Australia, killed no Palestinians.

Leaders of the Muslim community can help bring peace to the streets by calling on their followers to abandon the old hatreds.

By advocating unity over division, they would earn the respect of Australia, and bring their communities into the mainstream of Australian life, where they should be.