About those nurses…

Police were last night speaking with two Sydney nurses after video emerged of them saying they kill Israeli patients.

Ahmad "Rashad" Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh have been stood down from their nursing jobs at Bankstown Hospital and Premier Chris Minns has said he will ensure they never work for NSW Health again.

The pair were on shift at the hospital when they had a video conversation with Israeli Max Veifer on the social website Chatruletka. When Veifer revealed he was Israeli, they threatened him and appeared to boast that they had and would kill Israeli patients.

TJI Editor Deborah Stone spoke to Sam Hawley on ABC News Daily about the case and the context in an Australia facing increasingly extreme and frequent cases of antisemitism.

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Israeli influencer: How are you, man?
NSW Nurse, male: Good, how are you, my man? Pretty good.
Israeli influencer: Are you a nurse, a doctor?
NSW Nurse, male: I'm a doctor, my man.
Israeli influencer: A doctor, for what?
NSW Nurse, male: In hospital. What about you? Where are you from?
Israeli influencer: I'm from Israel.

Sam Hawley: Deborah, this video, it's been shared on social media by an Israeli content creator, and it's appalling. It's shocking.

Deborah Stone: It's shocking. It's terrifying. I don't think we ever thought we'd see anything like this in Australia.

Sam Hawley: So, in this video, the man who says he is Israeli is speaking to a man and woman in a hospital, and we now know they are nurses at Bankstown Hospital in Sydney's west.

Israeli influencer: I'm from Israel, from the Holy Land.
NSW Nurse, male: You know what, I'm going to be really honest with you I'm going to be really honest with you. You've actually got really, really beautiful eyes.
Israeli influencer: Thank you.
NSW Nurse, male: But I'm so upset that you're Israeli. Eventually you're going to get killed and you're going to go to Jahannam, Inshallah.

Sam Hawley: This conversation, it's happened on this website that randomly connects people via webcam around the world, and the conversation takes this turn when it's revealed the content maker is Israeli. Just tell me about it.

Deborah Stone: Essentially, they say that they are killing Israelis, Israeli Australians, Jewish Australians who come to New South Wales Hospital for treatment.

Israeli influencer: I have a question. Let's say, let's say an Israeli. God forbid.
NSW Nurse, female: I won't treat them. I won't treat them I'll kill them.

Deborah Stone: And it's based on the dehumanisation of other people. They're saying that if these particular individuals turn up in their ward, they're going to kill them.

Israeli influencer: You'll kill them? So if an Israeli is in Australia and God forbid something happened to him and he comes to your hospital, would you kill him?
NSW Nurse, male: Okay, you have no idea how many Israeli dog came to this hospital and sent them to Jahannam.
Israeli influencer: For real?

Sam Hawley: And then the man tells this Israeli content maker that he will send Israelis to hell while making a threatening gesture to his neck.

Deborah Stone: He actually says he has done so. He says, I sent them to Jahannam, which is Islamic hell.

Ryan Park, NSW Health Minister: 7.20 this morning. I was informed and made aware of one of the most vile, shocking and appalling videos I have ever seen.

Sam Hawley: Well, the New South Wales Health Minister, Ryan Park, he did react very quickly after this video was released, demanding an investigation by the New South Wales Health Department and referring it to the New South Wales Police.

Ryan Park, NSW Health Minister: There is no place in our hospital and health system for this sort of view to ever, ever take place. The investigative process now takes place. I don't want to leave a slither, a slither of light to allow any of them to be able to think that they will ever work for New South Wales Health again.

Sam Hawley: He was really strong in his comments, wasn't he?

Deborah Stone: Yes, and appropriately so. We have to be aware that this is happening in the context of the sharpest rise in antisemitism that we've seen in Australia ever.Quadruple the number of cases last year compared to the previous year. I mean, I think your listeners are probably aware of some of the extreme cases, a synagogue burnt to the ground, people attacked on the street, a childcare centre vandalised. But we're also seeing daily threats, daily attacks. I'm a person who has always bSeen inclined to say that, you know, other Jews are a little bit too fearful, that most Australians are decent, peaceful, fair go believers. And I still do think that, but I can no longer say that other people are crying wolf, that things are not as bad as they seem. Things are very, very bad.

Sam Hawley: As we mentioned, of course, the pair have been identified as being from Bankstown Hospital in Sydney's west. They have been stood down pending this investigation. Ryan Park says he's also spoken to staff at that hospital. They're upset, they're embarrassed, they're ashamed. All very normal feelings, I would have thought, for the staff there after seeing this video.

Deborah Stone: Yes, and I'm sure they are. And as I say, I do believe that the vast majority of Australians are appalled by this kind of behaviour.

Sam Hawley: Yeah, all right. As you say, there's been a very, very concerning rise in anti-Semitism in this country. You work, of course, Deborah, for a Jewish news website. So basically every day you are in touch with the community. What has their reaction been to this?

Deborah Stone: I think people are shocked but not surprised. Unfortunately, I think the community has got to the point over the past few months where we are starting to expect but not accept appalling cases of anti-Semitism in Australia.

Sam Hawley: Yeah, it goes directly to safety, doesn't it?

Deborah Stone: Oh, totally.

Sam Hawley: How are the Jewish people in Sydney and around the country, not just Sydney, we've seen attacks in Melbourne, in Perth, what are they doing? How are they coping with this?

Deborah Stone: There are a lot of people who are starting to be afraid to identify themselves as Jewish who are starting to withdraw. I was just in touch with a Jewish school principal this morning who told me that they've seen a rise in enrolments from people who don't feel their children are safe in state schools. I know people who will no longer wear a Star of David or a yarmulke. My own husband said he took off a T-shirt that happened to have the Jewish Independent logo on it when he was going to the supermarket. This kind of thing, it just should not ever happen in Australia.

Sam Hawley: Absolutely. So what about the police and government response in your view? There is now in New South Wales a police strike force involving stepped-up police patrols. There's investigations into hate speech. Is that working? Does that help? Is it enough?

Deborah Stone: It's certainly the case that there have been strong statements at all political levels and there have been attempts at both a legislative and police level to take action and the community understands and appreciates that. We've had new hate laws with mandatory sentencing. We've had doxing laws. We've had laws about hate symbols. There were new laws in New South Wales introduced yesterday relating to threats to places of worship. We've got strike forces or special operations at a federal policing and New South Wales and Victorian state level.

That's all good, but clearly it's not enough. Clearly it is not stopping this rise in antisemitism. So we need more. We need more police resourcing. We need more prosecutions. We need stronger judicial responses. We need more security funding. And I think perhaps most of all we need stronger action in the education space, at school level, at university level, and in the civic space, and particularly I think within ethnic communities. And I'm going to mention the elephant in the room here. There are clearly extremists within the Islamic community and it is upon the broader Islamic community to do something about them and it is upon the multicultural authorities and the people who fund them to make sure that those extremists are not allowed to influence the broader attitude of their communities.

Sam Hawley: It's a reminder, this video, isn't it, as well, that hate speech can spread really quickly through social media and other ways because most of us would view this video as absolutely appalling. Others would thrive off it.

Deborah Stone: When this kind of dehumanisation occurs, even if people disagree with it, it subtly changes the discourse across the wider society. So things become just a little more acceptable that should not be acceptable and people start to think, oh, you know, maybe there's some justification. And I think we have to be very, very clear about this, that this is not about Israel or Palestine. It's not about whether you believe Hamas's terror attack on the 7th of October justifies Israel's response in Gaza. It's not about whether you believe there should be a Palestinian state, which, incidentally, most Australian Jews do believe. This is about the right of Australians, Jewish Australians, Israeli Australians, all Australians, to live safely in Australia without threats of violence, without hate, without dehumanisation. It's simply about the right of every single human being to be treated as a human being.

Sam Hawley: It's hard to get that social cohesion, though, isn't it, when feelings do run so deeply?

Deborah Stone: Well, look, it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. We should be very clear about this. We're Australians. Our primary commitment should be to the social cohesion of the society in which we live. Whatever you think about what's going on on the other side of the world, and there's no question there's a great deal of polarisation and angst about it, but whatever you think, there is no justification for hate, threats, violence here in Australia.

Sam Hawley: Well, Deborah, in the federal parliament this week, the Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfuss, was really pleading with the opposition for bipartisan support or a bipartisan approach to this issue.

Mark Dreyfus, Attorney General: I do not need the Leader of the Opposition or any of those opposite to tell me what antisemitism is or how seriously I should take it.

Sam Hawley: Do you think there is bipartisanship, and if it is missing, would it help if we had it?

Deborah Stone: I think that antisemitism is being used as a political football. In the past couple of weeks, we've seen both the Prime Minister accusing the opposition leader of politicising the issue and the opposition leader accusing the Prime Minister of politicising the issue. We've seen the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, claiming that every single incident can be traced to the fault of the Prime Minister. This kind of language is just inappropriate. We have some basic values which all Australians agree on, and this is an example in which there's got to be a bipartisan approach. And as we approach an election, the idea that antisemitism is going to become an election issue is just appalling.

Sam Hawley: You mentioned your husband removing his T-shirt. I mean, we hear about the extreme cases of antisemitism, but we don't really hear about those smaller incidents, if you like, on the streets. Is that very widespread in your view?

Deborah Stone: It's happening every day. It's happening every day. Last year,there were 2,062 such incidents which were recorded in a 12-month period. Now, that's well over one a day. And, you know, many of those incidents were relatively small. They were stickers and posters and graffiti, but there were also more than 600 cases of verbal abuse, people just walking down the street and being attacked because they're Jewish. You know, there were 65 cases of physical assaults. And this incidentally was before, these figures are before the burning of the synagogue, the major incidents as we've seen in Sydney, which have all been since December 2024.

Sam Hawley: All right. Well, Deborah, this is clearly a breakdown in peaceful relations between parts of the community in Australia and in Sydney, of course. Do you really think that that can be reconciled?

Deborah Stone: Yes, I do. I still believe that the majority of Australians believe in a fair go for everybody. They do not support violence. They do not support threats. And they do not want the hatred and polarisation of the Middle East to affect the society we have here in Australia. And we just have to make sure that that minority is controlled and marginalised and is not allowed to threaten the social cohesion of our decent, fair society.

Sam Hawley: Deborah Stone is the Editor-in-Chief of the Jewish Independent news website. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead and Kara Jensen-Mackinnon. Audio production by Sam Dunn and Adair Shepherd. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.