Nurse fired for calling Gaza war “genocide” while accepting compassion award

A nurse was fired by a New York City hospital after referring to Israel’s war in Gaza as a “genocide” during an award acceptance speech.

Nurse Hesen Jabr, who is Palestinian-American, was honored by NYU Langone Health for her compassion in caring for mothers who have lost babies, when she made a connection between her work and the suffering of mothers in Gaza.

“It pains me to see my country’s own women suffering unimaginable losses during the current genocide in Gaza,” Jabr said, according to a video of the May 7 speech she posted on social media. “This award is deeply personal to me for these reasons.”

Jabr wrote on Instagram that she arrived at work on May 22 for her first shift back after receiving the award, when she was called into a meeting with the hospital’s president and vice president of nursing “to discuss how I put the others at risk’ and ‘ruined the ceremony’ and ‘offended people’ because a small part of my speech was a tribute to the grieving mothers in my country.”

She wrote that after working most of the shift, she was “dragged once again into an office” where she read her resignation letter and was then escorted out of the building.

An NYU Langone spokesperson, Steve Ritea, confirmed that Jabr was fired after his speech and said there was “an earlier incident as well.”

“Hesen Jabr was warned in December, following a previous incident, not to bring her views on this controversial and charged issue into the workplace,” Ritea said in a statement. “Instead, she chose not to pay attention to it at a recent employee recognition event that was widely attended by her colleagues, some of whom were upset by her comments. As a result, Jabr is no longer employed by NYU Langone.”

Ritea did not provide details of the earlier incident.

Jabr defended his speech in a interview with The New York Times and said that talking about the war “was very relevant” given the nature of the award he won.

“It was an award for mourning; it was for grieving mothers,” she said.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry says more than 36,000 people were killed in the territory during the war that began with Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7. About 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has been displaced and UN officials say parts of the territory are facing famine.

Critics say Israel’s military campaign amounts to genocide, and South Africa’s government formally accused the country of genocide in January when it asked the United Nations’ top court to order the suspension of Israeli military operations in Gaza.

Israel has denied the accusation of genocide and told the International Court of Justice that it is doing everything it can to protect Gaza’s civilian population.

Jabr is not the first employee at the hospital, which was renamed NYU Medical Center after a large donation from GOP donor and billionaire Kenneth Langone, to be fired over comments about the Middle East conflict.

A prominent researcher who ran the hospital’s cancer center was fired after publishing anti-Hamas political cartoons, including caricatures of Arab people. This researcher, biologist Benjamin Neel, has already sued the hospital.

Jabr’s firing wasn’t the first time she’s been in the spotlight, either. When she was 11 years old in Louisiana, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on her behalf after she was forced to accept a Bible from the principal of her public school.

“This isn’t my first rodeo,” she told the Times.