Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS.
Oh now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Thursday, the twenty seventh of February. I'm Zara, I'm Billy. Yesterday, a Sydney nurse was charged by New South Wales police over an antisemitic video that went viral earlier this month. When your time come, how are you doctors? I want you to remember.
Okay, okay, I have a question.
She's now facing three separate charges and is expected to face court next month.
Zara. So, this story first came to light earlier this month when this video that we just played a snippet of emerged and it showed two Sydney nurses talking to an Israeli content creator and it went viral online.
Yeah.
What do we need to know about that video?
Yeah? So, as you said, it was a video that went absolutely viral, but it originally was posted by Max Vifer, who's an Israeli content creator. In this video, he's seen speaking to two nurses on this chat app called chat Roulettka, where you can connect with people all across the world. One of the nurses initially tells the content creator that he is a doctor. We later found out that he is a nurse before they then begin to engage with
Vifa about being Israeli. I'm not going to attempt to summarize the video, but I'll play a quick clip about the nature of the conversation. Let's say, let's say an Israeli God beat them, You'll kill them. So if an Israeli is in Australia and that's wore something happened to him and he.
Comes to your hospital.
Would you kill him? Okay, you have no idea how many Israeli had a dog came to this hospital. And since that conversation was published online, the two nurses have been identified and we understand that they were working at Bankstown Hospital when that video was recorded.
And the response to this video at the time was pretty universal condemnation. I mean every political leader, well a lot of political leaders did a press conference and they all condemned what was said by these nurses in these videos.
Yeah. Correct, So we had, as you said, condemnation both at a state level and then also at a federal level. At a state level, the New South Wales Health Minister, very shortly after that video surface confirmed that both nurses had been stood down and that an investigation would follow. In a press conference at the time, Ryan park as I said the Health Minister called the video one of the most vile, shocking and appalling videos that he had
ever seen. He also said at that time that those nurses would never work for New South Wales Health ever again. But when he said those things, the investigation was just beginning. Leaders across the spectrum echoed this sentiment. We heard from the Prime minister, as you said, we heard from state premiers at the time, the government's Special envoy to combat anti Semitism, so that's the person that the government assigned
specifically to deal with this rising anti semitism. Her name's Gillian Siegel, and she said reassurance and words are not quite enough. They're important and necessary, but they're not sufficient. So I think that goes to a bit of the reaction that we had at the time earlier this month.
And from my understanding, so there was an investigation into what this means for these two people in terms of what they will now be charged with potentially be charged with. But then also they had to investigate whether the claims that they said in the video, which was that they allegedly threatened to not treat Israeli patient. They had to the police had to look into whether that had actually occurred by these two nurses at the hospital.
Yeah, exactly, And the complexity of this case was made apparent very early on by New South Wales Police. They issued a statement shortly after the videos saying, as the influencer is in Israel and the video is believed to have been created in Israel, police need to manage the complexities involved in gathering and producing evidence from an overseas jurisdiction to meet Australian legal requirements for the evidence to be admissible in Australian courts.
And when you say it was created in Israel, that's because it was livestream in Israel. But the nurses, to be clear, were in the hospital in Bankstown in Sydney.
Correct. But one would presume that this video would have formed a large part of the evidence and what happens when evidence is collected in another jurisdiction. That's what the police is saying was one of the complexities that existed here. However, they were still able to pursue this investigation. We know that in the same week that the video was released.
Police raided the home of one of the nurses and seized a number of items that raid, and then the subsequent seizure of those items was conducted by Strikeforce Perl And you're going to be hearing quite a bit about that because they are the strike force who led this operation, and that strike force was established to specifically combat arise in anti Semitic attacks across the state. So that's why it fell into kind of their jurisdiction.
And have we heard anything from these two nurses in the video.
So will refer to the male nurse and the female nurse. The male nurse spoke to the Daily Telegraph shortly after the video went online. He claimed his words were, and I'll quite directly hear a joke and a misunderstanding. He said that he intended to use social media to apologize and to specifically apologize to the Jewish community, but that he needed to speak two detectives first. So again, this
was at the beginning of the investigation. He also suggests that the entirety of what happened was just a mistake. Those were his words. Again. In terms of the female nurse, we haven't heard directly from her. Media hasn't had any direct interaction with her, but her uncle at the time told The Australian that she will come out and make a statement when she's ready. He went on to say
that she's never done anything to hurt anyone. Again, that's going to some of the allegations included in that video about allegedly not treating or you know, allegedly killing Israeli patients here in Australia.
Okay, so this video comes out earlier this month and there is this immediate response you know, from political leaders, It goes everywhere in the media, and we hear initially from the two nurses. But that was a few weeks ago now and we're talking about it today because yesterday New South Wales Police announced that they had charged the female nurse. Yeah, what do we know about those charges?
Yes, so yesterday morning we found out that a twenty six year old woman had been charged with three offenses. We know that it is the woman that was in that video. The three offenses are as followed, threatening violence to a group, the use of carriage services to threaten to kill, and the use of a carriage service to menace, harass and offend.
Quick question, when you say carriage service. Is that the online platform that streamed this conversation.
Yeah, exactly, it's the service that carried the communication that is at the center of the allegation. And so she was charged with these three offenses. She was granted conditional bail and the Sydney Morning Herald reported what those conditions were. So this woman is banned from using any social media, she's been required to surrender her passport and she's also prohibited from entering any international airport. So those are the conditions of the bail. But she is out on bail.
We are expecting her to appear in court on the nineteenth of March.
If she is found guilty, does it carry a maximum prison sentence.
Yes, So the main charge that she's facing this threatening violence to a group that carries up to seven years in jail, and the New South Wales Police Minister Yasmin Catley said yesterday that these are very serious charges and it is being dealt with appropriately, which could in the instance that she is found guilty, lead to jail time.
Okay, so that covers the woman in the video. But as we've been saying, there was also a man in this video. Do we know if there will be charges laid against him.
The short answer is no, we haven't been told that by New South Wales Police and at the time of recording, he hasn't been charged with any crimes. We did get a bit of a sense of how difficult and complex this case has been from New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb. She said that detectives had had to overcome obstacles and jurisdictional challenges to get to where we are today.
I need to press charges against the woman. She added that detectives should be commended for acting swiftly under enormous pressure and public expectation. That we didn't get a sense of if there are charges coming down the line for the man, or if there isn't enough evidence to charge him, and we'll just see these three charges against the female nurse.
I just want to end with a broader update on Strikeforce peerl because on this podcast we've now spoken about a number of anti Semitic attacks that have occurred across the state and as I said at the top, this strike force was specifically designed to attend to those crimes. There have now been fourteen people arrested under this operation and there have been seventy six charges laid to date, so I just thought that was an interesting figure to round this out with.
Sarah, thank you for taking us through it.
Thanks Billy, and thank you so much for.
Listening to this episode of The Daily Oz. We'll be back again this afternoon with your evening headlines, but until then, have a great day. My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda Bunje Lung Chalcotin woman from Gadigal Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torrestrate island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.