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Sydney, Australia – Widespread fear of anti-Semitic bias and harm within Australian healthcare settings has driven many Jewish patients to take extraordinary steps to conceal their religious and cultural identities, a senior Jewish community leader has told a landmark royal commission.

The testimonial was delivered by Rabbi Mendel Kastel, CEO of Jewish House and a Rabbinical Fellow, during the sixth session of New South Wales’ Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion – an inquiry launched following the fatal 2024 Bondi terror attack that sparked national reckoning with rising hate crime targeting Jewish communities.

Kastel told the commission that many Jewish patients have explicitly requested hospitals remove their religion from official medical records to avoid potential mistreatment. Beyond formal documentation, he added, some patients with distinctive Jewish last names or recognizably Israeli accents have altered how they present themselves to clinical staff, opting to omit last names or avoid speaking at length to keep their identity hidden.

The tipping point for these growing fears, Kastel explained, came after a high-profile 2024 incident that made global headlines. Last February, two Sydney nurses – 27-year-old Sarah Abu Lebdeh and 28-year-old Ahmad Rashad Nadir – were caught on video allegedly making violent threats against Israeli patients at Bankstown Hospital in western Sydney. Both have pleaded not guilty to charges of using a digital carriage service to menace, harass, and offend, and their trial is scheduled to begin next month.

“After that story broke, there was real fear across the community,” Kastel said in his evidence. “People are scared to go to hospital, scared to write that they are Jewish on their admission forms. Even people with Israeli accents hold back from speaking to nurses, because they don’t want their identity to be known.”

Kastel also shared that anti-Semitic targeting is not limited to patients: Jewish doctors and clinical staff have faced exclusion from professional group chats, and in one documented case, a Jewish doctor was verbally attacked by a patient who called them a “Zionist pig.”

In the wake of the Bankstown Hospital incident, Kastel noted he approached the facility himself to assess the climate of care, and was surprised by the warm welcome he received across all departments. “It didn’t matter what religion or culture someone was, everyone was welcoming,” he said.

That positive experience, however, has not erased systemic anxiety across the community. When NSW Health officials raised the idea of creating separate, alternative healthcare pathways for Jewish patients too afraid to access mainstream facilities, Kastel rejected the proposal outright.

“My answer was, absolutely not,” he said. “We don’t need separate care. We need to make sure every public hospital is safe, and every patient feels safe receiving care there. If people are allowed to push harmful agendas that change how a patient is treated, that is a line we cannot cross.”

Currently, the commission is developing new protocols, training frameworks, and reporting systems to address anti-Semitic conduct across three key sectors: healthcare, primary and secondary education, and the arts. The current session of public hearings is scheduled to conclude this Friday, with recommendations for systemic reform expected to be delivered later this year. A new confidential reporting system for patients and staff who experience anti-Semitism in healthcare settings is already in development, Kastel confirmed.

On a Tuesday morning in Melbourne, a verdict that capped off 14 days of dramatic courtroom testimony delivered a landmark outcome: a prominent Australian businessman was found guilty on two counts of rape and one count of sexual assault against a woman decades younger than him. As the jury foreperson read out guilty findings for all three charges, court observers witnessed the defendant lean back heavily in his chair, drop his head low, and leave his mouth agape, a visible display of emotion after weeks of proceedings.

Legal restrictions have shielded the businessman’s identity for more than three years, with a court suppression order barring media outlets from publishing key details including his full name, age, and specific industry of business. The order was scheduled to expire immediately following the conclusion of his trial, but in a last-minute procedural move, the man’s legal team applied for an extension of the publication ban. A follow-up hearing to address this request was scheduled for later the same Tuesday.

Court documents and prosecution arguments laid out the timeline of the 2023 incident that led to the charges. The pair first connected through LinkedIn, when the woman reached out to inquire about a job opening at the defendant’s company. Over the following months, the jury heard, the businessman made repeated unwanted sexual advances toward the woman, all of which she explicitly rejected. In one message, she told him plainly: “I don’t want that to be the role I play in your life, I’m not sexually attracted to you. I don’t want to have sex with you, the sooner you understand this the better.”

In early 2023, the defendant reached out to the woman with a new proposal: inviting her to his home to discuss assisting him with work on a book he was writing. The pair met at his residence, spent the afternoon and evening drinking alcohol and consuming cocaine, before later leaving to watch an Australian Football League match at a friend’s home, returning to the defendant’s apartment around 10:30 p.m. Back at the apartment, the pair continued using drugs and alcohol before the assaults began, according to the woman’s testimony.

Prosecutor Matthew Fisher told the court that after the woman repeatedly pushed the defendant away and explicitly said “I don’t want this”, the man continued his advances, responding that “You’re so sexy”, “I can’t stop” and “I need your help to sleep, help me”. He then raped the woman before she punched him in the face and escaped. Fisher acknowledged to the jury that there were minor inconsistencies and gaps in the woman’s recounting of the incident, but emphasized that she remained consistent and unwavering on the core facts of the assault. “You should accept her as an honest and genuine witness,” Fisher told jurors in closing arguments. “And accept my argument the accused man took complete advantage of her when she was alone and isolated in his house affected by alcohol and drugs.”

Through his lead barrister Dermot Dann KC, the defendant forcefully denied all allegations, arguing the sexual contact never occurred. The defense leaned heavily on the claim that the woman had a financial incentive to fabricate the claims, pointing to evidence that she had retained legal counsel to file a parallel civil lawsuit against the businessman, and had told associates she “was going to take this man for all that he’s worth.”

Following the guilty verdict, the defendant was immediately placed into remand custody. He is scheduled to return to court at a later date for sentencing proceedings, with the identity suppression hearing looming the same day as the verdict.