Two Australian medical workers caught on video making threats against Israeli patients have set off an uproar in a country where there has been a spate of antisemitic attacks in recent weeks. “I won’t treat them,” one of the workers, wearing medical scrubs and a hijab, is heard saying in the video. “I’ll kill them.” Discussing Israeli patients who had come to the hospital near Sydney, a co-worker, also dressed in scrubs, can be seen ominously running a finger across his neck.
The workers appeared to be speaking from inside a medical facility. Neither has been identified publicly by officials.
Australian officials have been quick to denounce the comments captured on the video, which went viral after a pro-Israel content creator posted it online.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday called the threats “sickening and shameful.” He said the two workers, identified as employees of Bankstown Hospital, had been suspended. He also said in a statement that they had been referred to the police for a criminal investigation.
That the country’s prime minister felt it necessary to comment on the video speaks to the high-level concern set off by a recent explosion in antisemitic speech and attacks. Australia has been hit with a rash of antisemitic attacks in recent weeks, including incidents where a synagogue was defaced with red swastikas and a day care facility was set ablaze.
There have been no reports of major casualties, but the violence represents a dramatic escalation of tensions reverberating from the war in Gaza, which has also spurred Islamophobic episodes in Australia.
In November, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an umbrella organization that has been tracking and documenting reports of antisemitism since 1990, reported a 316 percent increase in the number of incidents from October 2023 — when the war in Gaza began — to September 2024, compared with the previous twelve months.
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