This is not the community my father – or my daughter – knew

The western Sydney suburb of Bankstown has taken on a whole new meaning for me since nurses Sarah Abu Lebdeh and Ahmad ‘Rashad’ Nadir, spewed their virtual venom and murderous intent at me and my people last month.

Bankstown used to be the place where my father roamed as a four-year-old Jewish migrant from Palestine, and the home of the synagogue where he was bar mitzvah in 1947.

They called themselves “New Australians” then, those Jewish migrant who came off a boat with no English and a suitcase full of nothing. They opened delis like Frank Lowy did, and took in boarders like my grandmother did, and collected Argentine ants and cow manure for pocket money like my father did.

When that wave of New Australians had worked hard enough to move up and out, a new wave of migrants arrived from some other war-torn place, like Vietnam or Lebanon.

Bankstown has seen race hate before. In 1991 the Bankstown Synagogue was firebombed, during a rash of five attacks on synagogues in Sydney. It never reopened. That attack was an example of the Jew hatred that flourishes especially in places where there are no Jews (any more). It’s so much easier to hate people whom you don’t know as schoolmates, neighbours or work colleagues, and so don’t recognise as humans just like yourself.

Bankstown bookends the generations above and below me in my family. My daughter – also born in Israel - worked as a midwife at Bankstown Hospital for three years.

She describes the pre-October 7, 2023 environment there as supportive and warm. About half her colleagues were Muslim and they worked together happily. She felt free to correct the women she cared for if they mistook her for Arab, telling them without anxiety that her background was actually Jewish and Israeli and half-Yemenite.

She did pre-birth home care for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Muslim women – some of whom she didn’t recognise when they came to hospital in full niqab. Only once was there an incident: a woman in labour and her whole family refused to even look at her when they found out she was Israeli. The hospital had to bring another midwife in to replace her.

After the silence of the Nurses and Midwives Union about the rape and dismemberment and massacre and abduction of women just like my daughter, I think she felt a little differently about whether it was a supportive environment. I certainly did.

On October 13, 2023 (just six days after the pogrom) Hamas called an International Day of Rage.I called police and CSG for advice for my daughter as a Jewish Israeli Australian surrounded by people who might heed that call. They advised her not to wear her name badge and not to tell anyone where she was from.

She hasn’t told people since then. She has hidden her identity, this sixth generation (on my side) Australian Jewish midwife. Her colleagues still form a supportive work team, but they mostly “Don’t mention the war”.

Abu Lebdeh and Nadir (ironically or aptly this word means ‘the lowest point’) now been charged and are unlikely to work in Australian hospitals again, because in this country you lose your right to be a nurse when you say you’ve killed or want to kill a certain nationality of patient. As a former and possibly future patient, it’s quite a relief to know that.

I want to believe that they are the exceptions, not the rule. Clearly the lack of leadership in the health space (as in every space) gave those two permission to say out loud what I hope is not widely felt by other “carers” at Bankstown or any other hospital.

Of course, there will also be people who hate and you can’t police their thoughts, but strong moral leadership makes the public expression of that hate publicly unacceptable. Every patient and, in fact, every Australian needs it to go back to being so.

Bankstown and every other Australian hospital is now free from their filthy hatred. May it and every other suburb in this country also be free from the firebombing of gurudwaras, mosques, churches and temples. May they become places where even synagogues can be rebuilt.