Two nurses in Sydney recently said on social media that they would kill patients. They were in uniform and at work in Bankstown Hospital and the people they would kill were Israelis. They have now been banned from practising nursing throughout Australia as no healthcare facility can face the risk of these nurses treating patients. 

One would think this was appropriate. However, Senator Fatima Payman believes they have been treated harshly for what she believes is just a “terrible comment”. Now, an Australian collective of Hizb ut-Tahrir, Muslim Votes, The Muslim Vote Matters, pro-Palestine independent candidates, fire-breathing Islamic centres and as well as more mainstream groups like the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils and the umbrella Muslim organisations in Victoria and WA are weighing in. Their United Muslim Community Statement claims the two nurses were victims of “weaponised anti-Semitism” and “manufactured political outrage.”

The Muslim Statement put together by Stand 4 Palestine says the public and political reaction has really been a “coordinated outrage” and that the response to the nurses’ comments was “manufactured” to serve a “political narrative”. The Muslim Votes convener, Sheik Wesam Charkawi in a video released over the weekend said the nurses’ comments “were never meant to be (taken) literally or be a threat to patient care”. 

What has the world come to if we can’t believe the word of nurses in our hospitals? Why has the Australian government passed legislation against hate crimes if people can wriggle out of their social responsibilities by simply saying that they didn’t mean what they said? Why are we warned not to joke about having a bomb on a plane if we don’t expect the pilot to take it seriously and call the police? This is ludicrous.

Senator Payman feels that there is a double standard at play. She claims there was a “deafening silence” when a Sydney woman attempted to hit passer-by Sheik Wesam Charkawi with her car in December. This is a cheap debating trick on the Senator’s part. It ignores the fact that this one-off incident is nothing like the violence, intimidation and hate our Jewish community is experiencing. 

It is shocking that a group like Muslim Votes, one that is trying to attract mainstream votes from our Islamic communities, would choose to align themselves with hate preachers and a group like Hizb ut–Tahrir which is a prescribed terror organisation in other countries and has a history celebrating attacks against Israel and against Jews more widely. By doing so Muslim Votes are normalising one of the worst examples of anti-Semitism we’ve seen in this country. 

Concurrent to the defence “they didn’t really mean it” is the defence that it’s someone else’s fault. There are people suggesting that the video is some kind of Zionist plot. How absurd. The Israeli influencer had no idea these two nurses would show up, so how could he have pre arranged it. 

These nurses have eroded trust in our health care workers. Patients declare their religion when they are admitted. They trust that those looking after them are caring, ethical and will work to save their lives. What these Bankstown nurses have done will reflect on every Muslim healthcare professional here. How does that advance the interests of our community?

The suggestion that these two nurses should be forgiven because of the emotional impact that Gaza has had on them doesn’t hold up. It would be like a Jewish doctor here saying he was so upset by the 7 October massacre that he would not treat Muslim patients.  Until they were struck off, the Bankstown nurses were professionals who were subject to a code of conduct that required them to provide high-quality patient care.  No doubt NSW nurses are standing by for a raft of mandatory online cultural awareness learning packages.

It is worth noting here that in Israel’s healthcare system Jews and Arabs typically share hospital rooms. During the Syrian civil war, many victims were treated in northern Israeli hospitals, purely out of humanitarian interest and without cost. Before and even on October 7, 2023, many Gazans received world-class medical treatment in Israeli hospitals for all types of treatments from pacemakers to chemotherapy. Around 25 percent of physicians in Israel are Arab citizens as are 27 percent of the nurses, 27 percent of the dentists, and 49 percent of the pharmacists. 

There are reported cases where Jewish trauma specialists have prioritised treatment of terrorists who have arrived at hospital over terror victims in the same unit because the terrorist was in a worse condition. Let’s not forget that the surgeons at the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba removed Yahya Sinwar’s brain tumour when he was a prisoner of the Israelis and saved his life. Sinwar was the mastermind behind the October 7 terrorist massacre. The signatories to the “Muslim Statement” are really defending the indefensible. 

 Anthony Bergin is a senior fellow at Strategic Analysis Australia.  A version of this article first appeared in The Australian.