Australian Jewish patients allege nurses deliberately botched needle insertions
Investigation claims some patients suffered repeated painful IV attempts, amid wider allegations of antisemitism across Australia’s health service
Jewish patients have alleged that nurses deliberately made intravenous (IV) procedures painful because of their Jewish identity, according to a major investigation into antisemitism in Australia’s healthcare system.
The investigation, published by The Australian, features interviews with around 30 doctors, nurses, midwives and other healthcare professionals who claimed anti-Jewish hostility has spread through hospitals and clinics since the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023.
Among the most serious allegations are accounts from Jewish patients who said nurses repeatedly failed to insert IV cannulas, despite hospital protocols limiting how many attempts one clinician should make before another takes over.
Charlotte Frajman, 64, the daughter of an Auschwitz survivor, told The Australian she became concerned after the same senior nurse took four attempts to insert a cannula during more than one hospital visit.
“When it came to putting in the cannula (IV), he took four attempts. It was incredibly painful,” Frajman said. “I was bruised for weeks. You would have thought he was a trainee nurse, not the senior nurse in charge.”
Reflecting on the widely reported Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital case in which two Sydney nurses were charged after allegedly threatening Israeli patients in an online video, she added: “Then the Bankstown nurses thing came out, and my husband and I looked at each other, and we said: ‘Oh my God.’”
She said: “If I can’t have my Jewish religion on my medical records, then it’s time to leave Australia because we are no longer safe here.”
Another patient, Orit Brand, told the newspaper she asked a radiographer to stop after eight unsuccessful attempts to insert an IV. A second staff member then completed the procedure on the first attempt “with no pain and no bruising”.
Mental health nurse Nurit Hadad, who counsels victims of antisemitism in New South Wales, said she had heard similar allegations repeatedly.
“The needles, it is a story that keeps repeating,” she told The Australian. “This is the easiest way to hurt people. They say: ‘I’ve done my best, but I just couldn’t find a vein.’”
The investigation also alleges anti-Israel activism has increasingly entered hospitals, with some staff displaying protest symbols at work and others accused of posting antisemitic or pro-Hamas material on social media.
It claims stickers, including a Star of David crossed out with a red line, were placed beside the bed of an elderly Jewish patient at Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital shortly before he died.
The report also highlighted the case of Elon Glassberg, a former IDF surgeon general, whose scheduled appearance at a medical conference in Perth last year was cancelled after anti-Israel doctors’ and nurses’ groups threatened to protest.
Jewish paediatric neurologist Carly Debinski, who has since moved to Israel, told the newspaper: “Doctors and nurses were posting Nazi symbols and little caricatures of Jewish people but using the word ‘Zionist’ instead of ‘Jews’. They were so virtuous and obsessive about vilifying Jewish people.”
The report also alleges some Jewish doctors and nurses resigned after employers failed to act on complaints about antisemitic behaviour, while Jewish medical students described feeling isolated and excluded. It further claims hospitals and healthcare regulators failed to respond to complaints that would likely have prompted disciplinary action had they targeted another minority group.
Responding to the investigation, Israel’s Foreign Ministry described its findings as “a deeply troubling picture and should serve as a wake-up call.”
It added: “We call upon the Australian government to confront antisemitism forcefully.
“No Jew should ever feel compelled to hide their identity to receive medical care in an Australian hospital.”
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