A nurse at New York University’s Langone hospital was fired after mentioning what she described as a “genocide” in Gaza during an award ceremony speech.
Hesen Jabr, 34, a labor and delivery nurse who worked at NYU Langone for nearly 10 years, made the remarks while accepting an award earlier this month for providing excellent care to patients suffering perinatal loss.
Jabr, who is Palestinian-American and Muslim, spoke about mothers in Gaza experiencing bereavement due to Israel’s deadly war against the territory. More than 35,000 people in Gaza have been killed by Israel’s military actions, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
“It pains me to see the women from my country going through unimaginable losses themselves during the current genocide in Gaza,” Jabr said in her speech.
“Even though I can’t hold their hands and comfort them as they grieve their unborn children and the children they have lost during this genocide, I hope to keep making them proud as I keep representing them here at NYU,” she added.
On 22 May, the first day Jabr worked after receiving the award, she was fired. NYU Langone administrators accused her of “bringing politics into the workplace”, Jabr told the Guardian.
“It’s because I mentioned ‘genocide’. It’s bringing up Palestine. They were like, ‘It’s fine you mentioned your mother and your grandmother. You should’ve stopped there,’” she said.
In a statement, Steve Ritea, a spokesperson for NYU Langone, said: “Hesen Jabr was warned in December, following a previous incident, not to bring her views on this divisive and charged issue into the workplace. She instead chose not to heed that at a recent employee recognition event that was widely attended by her colleagues, some of whom were upset after her comments. As a result, Jabr is no longer an NYU Langone employee.”
Jabr said that her abrupt dismissal came after months of conflict with NYU Langone officials over her pro-Palestine social media posts.
Jabr said she had previously endured micro-aggressions as a Palestinian-American while working at NYU Langone. In an incident two years ago, a co-worker told her that Palestine “did not exist” when Jabr stated where she came from.
But since the 7 October attack by the Hamas militant group, Jabr said that tensions had flared at the workplace.
Benjamin Neel, a former cancer biologist and researcher at NYU Langone, is suing the hospital after he was fired for sharing cartoons that featured offensive caricatures of Arabs. That lawsuit revealed private emails sent by the hospital’s CEO, Robert Grossman, where he used crude terms to criticize pro-Palestinian protests to other NYU Langone employees, the New York Times reported.
Amid the friction, Jabr messaged one of her co-workers after they published several pro-Israel posts on Instagram. “I said, ‘You’re a new mother yourself. This is sick. How are you supporting this?’”
Following that conversation, Jabr said she was “ambushed” by NYU Langone’s human resource department into several meetings about her social media activity.
In one meeting, Jabr said that NYU Langone’s HR presented her with screenshots of her Instagram account and began “picking [them] apart”. “[They] basically told me to explain myself about certain posts that I made about Palestine and Israel.”
Jabr was later told to “stop posting”, as it was a violation of NYU Langone’s social media policy and code of conduct. But she said hospital officials never said how the posts violated their policy. A spokesperson for NYU Langone declined to specify or provide copies of their policies when asked by the Guardian.
“You’re telling me that I’m not allowed to speak up about what’s going on with my people?” Jabr said.
By December, after several meetings with HR, Jabr was given a final, written warning. The warning cited her previous conversation with her co-worker, claims that she was bullying and harassing others, and an Instagram post that Langone officials said was antisemitic. The post, she said, compared the IDF to Nazis, and was published after an Israeli town council chief said Gaza should be “left empty, just like Auschwitz”. She has since deleted the post.
Jabr said that during the HR investigation, a group purporting to fight antisemitism published her full name online, calling her an antisemite and tagging her employer. When she told NYU officials that she didn’t feel physically safe, Jabr said officials failed to act. “They never addressed my safety concern. It was like, ‘You’re bringing this on yourself. You need to fix it,’” Jabr said.
Jabr also said she was ordered to pay back an end-of-year merit bonus as well as the pay increase she had received – an amount that totaled over $8,000. “I was like, ‘OK, so now you guys are financially retaliating against me’,” Jabr said.
NYU Langone did not respond to questions about Jabr’s experiences with HR or her allegations that she was forced to return the funds.
Jabr is one of a number of employees to be punished for pro-Palestine remarks online since 7 October. Dylan Saba, a staff attorney with Palestine Legal, said that the group had seen an “unprecedented crackdown” on those speaking out in favor of Palestine.
While the first amendment’s right to free speech does not apply to private employers, Saba said that other laws prevent them from punishing pro-Palestine speech.
“The first amendment is not the only relevant law here,” Saba said. “Employers may not engage in national origin discrimination or on the basis of race or religion. You have Arab, Muslims and Palestinians expressing basic support for Palestinian humanity and being discriminated against on the basis of those posts. Those employers may be engaging in discrimination under federal civil rights laws,” he added.
Jabr said she planned on taking legal action against NYU Langone and is working with an attorney to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Despite the warnings and subsequent termination, Jabr said she felt compelled to speak out to emphasize the humanity of those in Gaza being killed.
“If I could just have somebody see my humanity, see our humanity as a people, you know, like, I’m gonna take that opportunity to make it happen,” Jabr said.
