Sydney — Two Australian nurses have been removed from their jobs over a video that appears to show them bragging they would kill Israeli patients in their hospital, authorities said Wednesday. Video released by Israeli influencer Max Veifer on social media appeared to show him in an online chat with a male and a female nurse at a Sydney hospital.
“I am so upset that you are Israeli, eventually you are going to get killed,” the male nurse tells him in an antisemitic tirade.
Asked by Veifer how they would treat Israeli patients, the male nurse says he has sent many Israeli patients to hell.
The female nurse says: “I won’t treat them, I will kill them.”
Some of the dialogue was censored and it was not immediately possible to verify the full circumstances or contents of the conversation or the recording. The video, posted to TikTok, was unavailable on the platform later Wednesday. Screengrabs posted online showed a logo for the Chatroulette website in the corner of the video, suggesting Veifer may have connected with the Australian nurses by chance on that platform, before reposting the video on his TikTok channel.
The male nurse reportedly told Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper the incident was a “joke, a misunderstanding” and promised to apologize.
Relatives of the female nurse were quoted by The Australian as saying she was having an anxiety attack over the furor.
Veifer told Australian broadcaster Sky News he had filmed the video the previous evening.
“I was shocked but I had a mission to accomplish, you know. I had to expose them,” he said.
It follows a series of antisemitic incidents over recent months in which vandals have torched a Sydney childcare center, firebombed a Melbourne synagogue and scrawled antisemitic graffiti in Jewish neighborhoods.
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“This video is disgusting. It is shocking. It is appalling,” New South Wales Health Minister Ryan Park told reporters, announcing an investigation by the state’s police and health authorities.
The pair had been “stood down immediately” from their jobs at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital in southwest Sydney, he added, saying: “Those people subject to that investigation will not ever be working for New South Wales Health again.”
Park said an initial assessment of the hospital’s records indicated that it had been operating safely and with care.
The state’s police force said it had identified the nurses and “a thorough investigation is underway.”
“This is a sad day for our country — it is unthinkable that we are confronted with, and forced to investigate, such an appalling incident,” said New South Wales police commissioner Karen Webb.
Police had interviewed staff, seized security video and established where in the hospital the two nurses had allegedly been filmed, she said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told parliament he had seen the video.
“It is driven by hate, and it is disgusting. The comments are vile, the footage is sickening and it is shameful,” he said.
About one year ago, Australia’s parliament enacted landmark legislation banning the performance of the Nazi salute in public and outlawing the display or sale of Nazi hate symbols such as the swastika.
