Health hate
The Bankstown Hospital nurses have become the public lightning rod for the crisis of hate in our hospitals.
Much has been said about the Bankstown Hospital nurses who threatened to kill Israelis and claimed to have already done so.
The two individuals have rightly lost their jobs and registrations. They have become the public lightning rod for the crisis of hate in our hospitals.
But they are not cause, they are the symptom.
Hate is festering in Australian healthcare. Midwife Sharon Stoliar tried to raise the alarm but was punished for speaking up while the perpetrators were left alone.
Many of those who demonstrated outside NSW Parliament last week with banners reading “no hate in health” would do well to look inward. It was not so long ago that members of the Nurses and Midwives Union wore their scrubs to a different demonstration – one at which Israel was falsely accused of genocide. Members of that union have also regularly joined the weekly hatefests in our capital cities calling for the elimination of the Jewish state.
How can they not see a connection between the vile Hamas propaganda they have helped to spread and two of their number coolly declaring that killing Israelis (code: Jews) is acceptable?
Many have commented how the pair expressed their sentiments as if there was nothing controversial about it. What kind of environment nurtures someone to think that is okay?
That question was answered in part this week. The joint letter signed by Muslim organisations and prominent individuals – plus the extremist Hizb ut-Tahrir – called the banned nurses victims of a “calculated and politically motivated outrage” and said the framing of the incident as antisemitic “follows a well-documented pattern of gaslighting by powerful Zionist lobby groups”.
It is co-signed by, among others, preacher Wissam Haddad, who the Executive Council of Australian Jewry is taking legal action against for hate speech, and Sheikh Ibrahim Dadoun, who described the Hamas massacre as “a day of courage, a day of victory”.
Clearly, while the Muslim community is generally law-abiding and contributes positively to Australia, problematic attitudes towards Jews and Israel are widespread.
Maybe their statement has a point – but not the one they were trying to make. There IS too much focus just on the two nurses. The focus should be widened significantly.
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