A nurse at a New York hospital won an award for compassion from her employers — and then got fired for using her acceptance speech to accuse Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza.
Palestinian American labor and delivery nurse Hesen Jabr, 34,delivered the fiery remarks as she was being honored earlier this month by NYU Langone Health for her efforts in caring for mothers grieving lost babies.
“It pains me to see the women from my country going through unimaginable losses themselves during the current genocide in Gaza,” she said during her May 7 acceptance speech, according to a video she posted on social media.
“This award is deeply personal to me for those reasons,” Jabr said in her brief remarks, during which she twice used the word “genocide” to describe the Israeli war.
Jabr says she was “dragged” into a meeting with NYU Langone’s president and vice president of nursing on her first day back to work after the ceremony, on May 22.
She said in an online posting that the meeting was called to “discuss how I ‘put others at risk’ and ‘ruined the ceremony’ and ‘offended people’ because a small part of my speech was a tribute towards the grieving mothers in our country.”