Imagine the uproar if a white Christian doctor refused to treat a Muslim Arab patient – or worse, boasted of killing them under their care. The public would be outraged, not only at the cruelty but at the sheer incongruity of such malice from a profession defined by care and a faith defined by compassion. Yet when two Australian nurses – Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh – publicly declared their willingness to kill Israeli patients, the horror was accompanied by something more chilling than shock: recognition. Their depravity felt like an affirmation of the darkest fears about imported hatreds and their place within our institutions.
The video that surfaced of the pair talking online to an Israeli man on Chat Roulette was harrowing. Nadir, an Afghan refugee who became an Australian citizen in 2020, boasted that he had sent ‘Israeli dogs’ to hell, while Abu Lebdeh vowed to kill any Israeli patient in her care. Tragically, this incident partially confirms the fears of many Jews who since 7 October have seen unabashed antisemitism reappearing in all parts of their lives, including in hospitals and clinics.
No one suggests that most Muslim healthcare workers would ever act with such malice, yet the reality is that such hostility within medical settings is not without precedent. In fact, these Australian nurses join a troubling pattern of incidents that reveal how entrenched hatreds can still be harboured by medical workers, and even pervert their most sacred human duty: to heal without prejudice.
Palestinian doctors have a troubling history, for example. Waleed Mustafa, a Palestinian doctor and Hamas commander, used his medical credentials to plan terror attacks. Similarly, Dr Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, a paediatrician, co-founded Hamas. Dr Fathi Shaqaqi, a physician by training, co-founded the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in 1981, which under his leadership orchestrated numerous attacks against Israeli targets. Last December, Israeli forces arrested Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal-Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, accusing him of being a Hamas operative and using the hospital to shield terrorist activities. Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, an employee of Médecins Sans Frontières since 2020, was found to have expressed support for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and terrorist activities on social media.
It is not only in conflict zones that such hatred manifests. In Pakistan, in 2024, a Muslim doctor at the Civil Hospital of Sahiwal in Punjab told Yousaf Masih Gill that he would not treat his father: ‘had I known he was Christian, I would not have touched him,’ he said.
The Australian case feels especially terrifying because it confronts a cultural reality often ignored. In some corners of the Middle East and beyond, the dehumanisation of Jews is commonplace – taught in schools, broadcast on television, and preached from podiums. When individuals raised in such an environment become doctors or nurses, is it truly shocking that some carry those hatreds with them into their professional lives?
If the discussion of culturally or religiously inspired medical malpractice feels uncomfortable and politically incorrect, it may feel even more so to point out that Israelis, by contrast, are renowned for upholding medical ethics even when treating their enemies. Consider the case of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader responsible for orchestrating countless terrorist attacks. In 2004, he was saved by Israeli surgeons who removed his brain tumour while he was an Israeli prisoner. During the 2014 Gaza War, Ismail Haniyeh’s granddaughter was treated in an Israeli hospital. The contrast is stark: Israelis routinely uphold the value of life – even the lives of those sworn to destroy them.
Hatred must have no place in our hospitals
For Jews, this is not an academic concern but a visceral fear. Since 7October, the spectre of medical bias looms larger than ever. Jewish patient and staff in the NHS have voiced growing anxieties that the people entrusted with their lives may carry the same contempt that animated the Australian nurses. Last year at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, a nine-year-old Jewish boy receiving treatment for a blood disorder was allegedly forced to sit on the floor by nurses displaying pro-Palestinian insignia. The British Medical Association is also investigating claims that its president Mary McCarthy, a leading GP, ‘repeatedly amplified’ allegedly anti-Semitic posts on her social media account, creating a ‘hostile environment’ for Jewish doctors.
British Labour MP Jess Phillips claimed she recently received preferential treatment in a Birmingham hospital when recognised by a Palestinian doctor, who remarked approvingly, ‘I like you. You voted for a ceasefire.’ Phillips, who had supported a halt to Israel’s defensive war against Hamas, felt her politics had bought her swifter care. But what if she had voted the other way? What would that doctor’s hands have done? Yet this chilling confession led to nothing – no investigation, no disciplinary action, no assurance to Jewish patients that their lives would not be weighed against their politics.
The difference lies in cultures that either sanctify human life or degrade it through ideological hatred. To say this is uncomfortable. To admit it is necessary. Hatred must have no place in our hospitals, but to ensure that, we must confront hard truths about where such hatreds come from, how they travel, and why they sometimes surface in the most sacred spaces of care. The Australian scandal is not an anomaly; it is a warning.
Comments