It was bad enough when two Australian nurses were caught on camera saying they wouldn’t treat Israeli patients and instead would “kill them.” But now 50 of Australia’s Muslim community groups have rushed to the nurses’ defense. If a couple of Aussie caregivers doing a throat-slitting gesture to a man from Israel was chilling, the fact that so many Muslim leaders are willing to stand up for them is outright terrifying.
This sordid story started a week ago with the release of a video showing two nurses at Bankstown Hospital in Sydney engaging in the most abhorrent Israelophobic chatter. They were talking with an Israeli TikToker, Max Veifer, after encountering him on a video chat site. He told them he was Israeli. One of the nurses drew his fingers across his throat to suggest Veifer deserved to die. He said he sends Israelis to Jahannam—the Muslim version of hell. The other nurse said she would never treat an Israeli. “I won’t treat them. I will kill them.”
The clip went viral and the nurses were suspended. Australian PM Anthony Albanese slammed their “antisemitic comments.” There was horror across Oz that these nurses seemed to have sacrificed the core moral principle of medicine—first do no harm—at the altar of their burning hatred for the Jewish state. Yet there’s a section of Aussie society that seems pretty blasé about the whole thing: self-appointed Muslim leaders.