Nurse fired by New York hospital after speaking out Israel’s war in Gaza as a “genocide” during an award speech.
Labor and delivery nurse Hesen Jabr, who is Palestinian American, was honored by NYU Langone Health for her compassion in caring for mothers who had lost babies when she made a connection between her work and the suffering of mothers in Gaza.
“It pains me to see the women of my country suffering unimaginable losses themselves during the current genocide in Gaza,” Jabr said, according to a video of the May 7 speech that she posted on social media. “This award touches me deeply for these reasons.”
Jabr wrote on Instagram that she arrived at work on May 22 for her first return after receiving the award when she was called to a meeting with the hospital’s president and vice president of nursing “to discussing how I ‘put others in danger’ and ‘I ruined the ceremony’ and ‘offended people’ because a small part of my speech was a tribute to the grieving mothers of my country.
She wrote that after working most of her shift, she was “dragged once again into an office” where she was read her termination letter and then escorted out of the building.
An NYU Langone spokesperson, Steve Ritea, confirmed that Jabr was fired after her speech and said there was “also a prior incident.”
“Hesen Jabr was warned in December, following a previous incident, not to express her views on this controversial and contentious workplace issue,” Mr Ritea said in a statement. “Instead, she chose to ignore it during a recent employee recognition event attended by many colleagues, some of whom were upset after her comments. As a result, Jabr is no longer an employee from NYU Langone.”
Ritea did not provide any details about the previous incident.
Jabr defended her speech in an interview with The New York Times and said that talking about the war “was very relevant” given the nature of the award she won.
“It was a reward for grieving; it was for grieving mothers,” she said.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says more than 36,000 people have been killed in the territory during the war that began with Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7. About 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced and U.N. officials say parts of the territory are experiencing famine.
Critics say Israel’s military campaign amounts to genocide, and the South African government formally accused the country of genocide in January when it asked the United Nations’ highest court to order a halt to Israeli military operations in Gaza.
Israel has denied the accusation of genocide and told the International Court of Justice that it was doing everything it could to protect Gaza’s civilian population.
Jabr is not the first employee at the hospital, which was renamed NYU Medical Center after a major donation from Republican Party donor and billionaire Kenneth Langone, to be fired for comments about the Middle East conflict.
A prominent researcher who headed the hospital’s cancer center was fired after publishing anti-Hamas political cartoons, including caricatures of Arab people. This researcher, biologist Benjamin Neel, has since sued the hospital.
Jabr’s firing wasn’t her first time 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.
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