Anti-Semitism casts doubt on success of multiculturalism

NSW Premier Chris Minns’s statement that the racist outburst by two nurses at Bankstown Hospital represented the views of a “small, small fraction” of the state’s healthcare workers is well intended, but unfortunately not reassuring.

What workplace culture, what religious institutions, what educational establishments, what family and social connections have fostered and encouraged not just the development of such vile racism but the normalisation of its gleeful expression?

Our supportive, tolerant, inclusive, respectful and liberal society is under attack and we must defend it at every level. Regrettably, our federal Labor government shows neither the will nor the way.

Allan Kalus, Windsor, Vic

Claire Lehmann has precisely identified what is manifest in the shocking threat by healthcare workers to kill or otherwise injure patients in their care who are of a certain nationality or race (“Nurses’ threats to kill trust in our health care”, 13/2).

Apart from the truth expressed in The Australian’s lead editorial (“Nurses’ anti-Jewish hatred antithesis of medical ethics”, 13/2), the threat that confronts us, in Lehmann’s words, comes with an uncomfortable but urgent question: If one group of Australians cannot safely access public healthcare – a basic right – can we claim to be a successful multicultural society? That claim is now very much in doubt.

Ian Dunlop, Hawks Nest, NSW

I was a doctor for 50 years. In my travels I have treated desert Bedouins and grass-skirted islanders. I have treated Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Animists and Zoroastrians. In my entire medical life I have followed the basic medical Hippocratic ethic of care, at worst, try to “do no harm”.

I find any medical or nursing practitioner who does not fulfil that dictum worthy only of contempt. To fail to treat, or worse, to threaten harm, on grounds of perceived difference, is professionally unacceptable.

Nurses who claim to do this are unworthy of their title; if from overseas they are also unworthy of citizenship.

Graham Pinn, Maroochydore, Qld

The Australian’s editorial correctly notes that not only have the two Bankstown Hospital nurses rejected the ethos of Australia as a welcoming country to people of all races and religions, they have rejected the very essence of what it means to live in a Western liberal democracy.

Historically, societies that have embraced anti-Semitism have always collapsed; modern examples would include the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Of course Australia must avoid going down this path.

Alan Freedman, St Kilda East, Vic

Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh have committed a disgraceful act by suggesting they would murder Israeli patients under their care at Bankstown Hospital.

Yet I cannot find any references of them being held by the authorities. It seems they were sent home. Australia promised to be the great leveller of races, beliefs and culturalism. What has happened to us? It is not too late to turn around this anti-Semitism but it needs a strong hand and resolve from the government.

Ida Haigh, Albion, Qld

When nurse Vivian Bullwinkel and her sister nurses bravely faced the guns of their executioners on Radjii Beach during World War II, they stood for the most noble values of care that we Australians hold dear.

In one vile video, 83 years later, two members of the most caring profession in our country have tried to destroy our trust in their legacy. I’m grateful for the welfare of our wonderful nurses, who will rise above this awful crisis to continue the work that has made their profession the gold standard of compassion and care that all Aussies love and cherish.

John Bell, Heidelberg Heights, Vic

I suspect that the two nurses from Sydney’s Bankstown Hospital, who unleashed their vile tirade about killing Israelis, will use the Greens’, Muslim Vote and university academics’ defence that it wasn’t anti-Semitic, or any way racist, but rather it was an expression of academic freedom and was politically motivated against the Israeli government and not Jews per se: after all, there are anti-Israel Jews organising pro-Palestine rallies

Henry Herzog, St Kilda East, Vic