Australian Senator Fatima Payman claimed Sunday a “double standard” is at play in the outrage over two Sydney nurses caught on camera making vile anti-Semitic threats.
Afghanistan-born Payman, who migrated to Australia as a child with her family, spoke out after nurses Ahmed ‘Rashid’ Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh told Israeli influencer Max Veifer they would kill their Jewish patients in a video that went viral, as Breitbart News reported.
Senator Payman said what the nurses did was wrong and “thankfully no Israeli patient was killed” but called for critics to move on.
“They made a terrible comment yet are been treated as if they have committed the absolute worst crime imaginable,” Senator Payman said. “These individuals have been fired, banned from ever working as nurses again, raided by police, placed under the most intense public scrutiny and now (they are) the ones being hospitalised; they’ve apologised, they have been punished.
“What is the end goal here? What exactly are we trying achieve? Justice or just public humiliation?
“We never see the same level of anger and vitriol when the roles are reversed.”
Last year, Senator Payman refused to declare the actions of Hamas on October 7 were an act of terrorism or an act of resistance as she was grilled on her fledgling political party.
Police are yet to lay charges against Nadir and Abu Lebdeh, six days after the video went viral.
Neither party has been interviewed by police investigating the matter, with co-accused Ahmed “Rashid” Nadir claiming he needs time to recover for the sake of his “mental health.”
Meanwhile a coalition of Islamic groups pleaded the sickening remarks made by the nurses that they would kill Israeli patients were “emotional and hyperbolic,” the Guardian reports.
The groups said in a statement on Sunday the “speed, intensity and uniformity of responses from certain political leaders and media outlets” was “revealing.”
They claimed the same voices that condemned the nurses had “provided active diplomatic and journalistic cover for ongoing crimes by the Zionists.”
The coalition said: “This statement is not about defending inappropriate remarks. It is about pushing back against the double standards and moral manipulation at play while the mass killing of our brothers and sisters in Gaza is met with silence, dismissal, or complicity.”
