# Sydney nurses stood down after video sparks anger over Israeli patients
By IO Digest Desk
Two New South Wales hospital workers were stood down on 2025-02-11 after a social media video appeared to show them threatening to refuse treatment to Israeli patients and making abusive remarks about killing or harming them.
The footage triggered a fast-moving political and regulatory response. NSW Health Minister Ryan Park called the behaviour “vile, disgusting and appalling” and said the pair, identified as nurses from Bankstown Hospital in Sydney, had been removed from duty immediately while investigations began. Park said the state’s police and the NSW Healthcare Complaints Commission would both investigate.
The video was published by an Israeli content creator, who said it showed an online video-chat conversation with the pair. In the clip described by The Guardian, one of the workers, wearing scrubs with a NSW Health insignia, identified himself as a doctor. After the creator said he was from Israel, the man made a hostile remark about Israelis. The woman then answered a hypothetical question about treating an Israeli patient by saying she would not treat them and would kill them. The man also claimed to have sent Israelis to “Jahannam”.
Public officials moved quickly to separate the conduct in the video from the wider health system. Park apologised to the Jewish community and said patients should be able to go to public hospitals and receive safe, effective care. He also said there was no place in the hospital system for that sort of perspective.
The NSW Health secretary, Susan Pearce, was also recorded in the evidence packet as speaking on the issue, reinforcing that the incident was treated as a serious breach rather than an isolated online embarrassment.
Police and the complaints commission now face parallel questions. The first is whether the conduct captured in the video amounts to criminal behaviour or disciplinary misconduct. The second is whether the workers violated professional standards by speaking as hospital staff while in uniform and on camera.
A solicitor representing the male nurse said his client had apologised to the individual in the video and to the broader Jewish community. He said the nurse had no prior criminal matters and had tried to make amends. That defence, however, did little to blunt the immediate institutional response.
The case landed in a wider climate of concern about antisemitic abuse and the treatment of minority patients in public institutions. The speed of the stand-down suggests that NSW Health viewed the reputational and clinical risk as severe, especially given the allegation that the comments were made by people working in a hospital setting.
The evidence packet says the pair were identified as Bankstown Hospital nurses and that the investigation would determine their future within NSW Health. For now, the state’s message was direct: public hospitals must be places where anyone can seek care without fear of discrimination or violence.
What began as a disturbing online exchange has therefore become a formal employment, police and professional standards issue. The immediate sanction was standing the workers down. The broader question is how such conduct was possible at all inside a public health system that depends on trust from every patient it serves.
