A Jewish NSW Health worker said she considered cancelling her knee surgery after becoming “paralysed” with fear in the wake of two nurses making threats against Israeli patients.
Dozens of people appeared this week at the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion in Sydney to share their experience of antisemitism at schools, workplaces and in the community.
The inquiry was called after 15 people were killed at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi on December 14, 2025.
The NSW Health midwife and nurse manager, known as AAV, was one of several to give evidence to the commission using pseudonyms to protect their identity.
She said she was subject to “under the breath” insults and offensive comments from colleagues in the wake of October 7, 2023, when 1,200 people were killed during a Hamas attack in Israel.
She said the hostage situation for Jewish people was “very personal”, with one of her own cousins captured in Gaza in October 2023 before his body was returned to Israel earlier this year.
She told the royal commission her manager asked her to remove posters she had placed on her desk calling for the freeing of Israeli hostages due to the “likelihood of [the images] upsetting or offending other people in the workplace”.
People would pass her in the corridor of the clinic and say “shame on you” and “you must be really ashamed to belong to a group of child killers”, she told the inquiry.
She said she experienced “the worst 24 hours of [her life]” after two NSW nurses were accused of making a video threatening Israeli patients in February 2025.
The woman was due to have knee surgery she had been waiting 15 months for and said she seriously considered cancelling the operation after imagining “all the ways [she] may be killed” while in hospital.
“I was paralysed with fear,” she said.
The woman said she requested precautions to make her feel safe, including requesting the presence of a family member while she was under anaesthesia, the removal of her religion from her health record and the presence of a Jewish doctor during surgery.
She said her sons brought her kosher meals instead of requesting some from the hospital, in an effort to disguise her religion.
‘Devastating’ loss Jewish cafe
A grandmother has told the royal commission on antisemtisim the loss of her business to an alleged attack was “devastating”. (ABC News)
A Jewish cafe owner earlier told the royal commission on antisemitism of the “devastating” loss of her business to a fire in an alleged attack.
Grandmother Judith Lewis established Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in 1970 alongside her husband, with the Bondi cafe offering a kosher takeaway food option to the Jewish community.
Judith and Karyn Lewis told the royal commission about the impact of the family deli’s closure. (Supplied)
The deli was destroyed in a fire in October 2024, with a man charged with damage property by fire/explosion in relation to the incident.
Ms Lewis said it was one of few kosher delis in the city, meaning it became a “communal centre” for people to meet and its closure had been felt by the Jewish community.
“It really has restricted the flexibility for people to eat like normal, un-Jewish people,” she said.
“For us it’s devastating because we’re not seeing all our friends, the customers very much became friends.”
Firefighters responding to a cafe on fire in Bondi on October 20. (ABC News)
Australia’s national security agency ASIO later said it was believed the Iranian regime was behind the incident.
The commission moved behind closed doors for part of Ms Lewis’s evidence, with the material unable to be reported.
Man wears swastika shirt outside antisemitism royal commission
While the hearings had largely proceeded without incident, a man on Wednesday was moved on from outside the tribunal after police said he was wearing “clothing which allegedly displayed an offensive slogan on the front”.
The 68-year-old was later charged with behave in offensive manner in/near public place/school and cause prohibited Nazi symbol to be displayed in public place.
More on the royal commission