As nurses declare they’d kill Israelis, are you ready to pick a side yet?

You’d have to be a fool to believe we got here by accident. Australia’s awful, shameful underbelly of Jew hatred has been growing in the dark like black mould for years – and it started on the steps of the Opera House.

The Bankstown Hospital nurses who bragged about killing Israeli patients; a protest on the steps of the Sydney Opera House on October 9, 2023. Collage: Emilia Tortorella

Very few things happen in isolation. Divorce, for example (speaking from experience). Gaining or losing weight (again, a subject expert). The success or otherwise of a commercial venture. All of these things are typically the result of more than one factor. Even when certain things happen that may come as a shock to most people, it’s rare that there weren’t signs in the lead-up and several factors at play.

When two nurses employed at Sydney’s Bankstown Hospital were caught online this week, dressed in their NSW Health scrubs, declaring not only that they would kill Israeli patients rather than treat them but also bragging they’d already done so; when a caravan of explosives was found last month, destined for a Sydney synagogue; when a string of attacks in recent months have targeted Jewish homes, schools and businesses across the nation; when more and more details about the depraved cruelty of Hamas have emerged this week, one simple question has spoken loudly in my mind, demanded my attention.

Are you ready to pick a side yet? My question is directed to many: for those who have obfuscated; who have hidden behind words such as context and nuance; who have tried to have a buck each way because standing on the wall at times like this comes at a cost.

My question is definitely for the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. Are either of you ready yet?

My question is for everyone who has shrugged their shoulders and said it’s Australia, not the Weimar Republic. It’s not that big of a deal, not that pervasive a problem.

To the people I know who have rolled their eyes at the idea that Australia has a dark problem with Jew hatred, that foreign conflicts playing out on Australian streets are a clear, menacing and gathering storm, to you I’d ask this: What is it going to take? And how long until you find courage?

You’d have to be a fool to believe we got here by accident. Australia’s awful, shameful underbelly of Jew hatred has been growing in the dark like black mould for years. I know I started writing about it years before October 7, 2023. That day was the green light for it all to spill out in the open.

We didn’t get here, to the events of this week, where two nurses felt emboldened to brag about murdering Israelis in their workplace, because of a casual series of disconnected happenings.

It started on the steps of the Sydney Opera House on October 9, 2023. It started at that very moment it became clear to those who sought to bring foreign conflicts to Australia’s streets that they could without consequence; without so much as a parking fine. That nobody would stop them.

It started with weak leadership then and ran with impunity because of inaction. The escalating violent behaviour has been enabled at every step by the same moral weakness that has become the hallmark of this federal government. Here in Australia, and to our great shame, internationally.

We made news that night, the landmark of the Sydney Opera House captured in an image of hate. We’ve also made news this week. Australia, where medical staff brag about killing Israelis rather than treating them.

What happened at the Bankstown Hospital was met with horror. Of course it was. It is utterly horrific. In all my days I never imagined this in Australia. But this is no behavioural outlier. Broadly, there were numerous off-ramps, at which point nothing was done. Time and time again.

Want proof? Got plenty.

Burn the Israeli flag on the steps of the Sydney Opera House. No consequences. Drive across suburban Melbourne to terrorise Jews at their synagogue on a Friday night. No consequences. Shut down university campuses with violent, ugly encampments, harass Jewish students. No conse­quences. Clog CBD streets in Sydney and Melbourne weekend after weekend for more than a year, spewing hatred, sowing fear. No consequences. Week after week, hate preachers call from their pulpits for the annihilation of the Jews. Never any consequences.

It’s not complicated and it’s not hidden. Sickening false equival­ences driven by sections of the media who swallowed whole and without question Hamas’s lies and gave credibility to the same people who burnt families alive and kidnapped babies.

For 15 months the language of this federal government towards Israel has been punitive. It has been scolding. It has looked and felt like a principal chiding the one student in class who has had the guts to stand up to the worst bully in the school.

As the progressive left loves to remind us, language matters, and this too started on that awful day, when the worst atrocities since the Holocaust were unleashed like hell itself on Israel and its people.

Show restraint, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said as footage of Shani Louk’s naked, broken-limbed body being paraded on the back of a truck in front of cheering Gazans was being broadcast around the world. Show restraint, she said from the safety of Canberra as Naama Levy was dragged through dusty Gazan streets, bound, barefoot and in bloodied pyjama pants, shoved into a car, driven away and held captive.

When this government’s narrative is consistently critical of Israel, consistently weak in relation to the hostages and to Israel’s right to defend itself, it validated, enabled and emboldened Jew hatred in this country. Like I said, language matters. This fact seems to be lost on the government.

Even after the Adass Israel synagogue was firebombed, with people still inside, our Prime Minister’s priority was tennis and beers in sunny old Perth.

Actions will always betray what a person may seek to disguise with words. Appeasement is the road to hell. History is littered with irrefutable evidence. Perhaps our government felt as if we were far enough away from the conflict that it could have a buck each way. Appease voters it’s afraid of losing, toss sugar in another direction.

The Albanese government is finding out that the road to hell, this road paved with words of appeasement, is leading straight to the front door of everyday Australians and the values we hold dear. In every scorched car, in every torched building, in every piece of anti-Semitic graffiti on homes, schools and businesses across this country. In every armed guard at the gate of a Jewish school. In a caravan packed full of explosives and containing a list of targets; in every act of intimidation on university campuses and now at a hospital in western Sydney. That road is leading straight home.

I watched last week’s hostage release as if in a trance. These are horrors straight from the pages of history. And the testimony from these men, shadows of themselves, speaks of the worst for those who are still being kept hostages. Alon Ohel, for example. Hostages report he is being kept in chains underground and still has shrapnel in his eye and his arm from October 7 when he was abducted.

Hamas fighters escort Israeli hostage Or Levy on stage before handing him over to a Red Cross team in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, on February 8. Picture: AFP

We talk so much about generational trauma in this country, and that is justified. Imagine being Jewish and seeing those images this week. Imagine watching those nurses bragging about killing Israelis. Imagine seeing Kristallnacht play out in 2025 in Australian suburbs, hitting Australian businesses and families.

Never again, we told them. We failed. Our leaders failed them, and our leaders have failed us.

This is not about picking a side based on race, religion, faith or background. It is simply about one thing – Australian values. Australians know our values transcend these things. We share them and we cherish them.

This week, the NSW Health Minister delivered the strongest response yet to any of this. I don’t want you in our hospitals or in our communities, he said.

Who could disagree?