NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A nurse was fired by a New York City hospital after she referred to Israel\u2019s war in Gaza as a \u201cgenocide\u201d during a speech accepting an award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Labor and delivery nurse Hesen Jabr, who is Palestinian American, was being honored by NYU Langone Health for her compassion in caring for mothers who had lost babies when she drew a link between her work and the suffering of mothers in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt pains me to see the women from my country going through unimaginable losses themselves during the current genocide in Gaza,\u201d Jabr said, according to a video of the May 7 speech that she posted on social media<\/a>. \u201cThis award is deeply personal to me for those reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jabr wrote on Instagram that she arrived at work on May 22 for her first shift back after receiving the award when she was summoned to a meeting with the hospital\u2019s president and vice president of nursing \u201cto discuss how I \u2018put others at risk\u2019 and \u2018ruined the ceremony\u2019 and \u2018offended people\u2019 because a small part of my speech was a tribute towards the grieving mothers in my country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She wrote that after working most of her shift she was \u201cdragged once again to an office\u201d where she was read her termination letter and then escorted out of the building.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n A spokesperson for NYU Langone, Steve Ritea, confirmed that Jabr was fired following her speech and said there had been \u201ca previous incident as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHesen Jabr was warned in December, following a previous incident, not to bring her views on this divisive and charged issue into the workplace,\u201d Mr. Ritea said in a statement. \u201cShe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ritea did not provide any details of the previous incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jabr defended her speech in an interview with The New York Times<\/a> and said talking about the war \u201cwas so relevant\u201d given the nature of the award she had won.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was an award for bereavement; it was for grieving mothers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gaza\u2019s Ministry of Health says that more than 36,000 people have been killed in the territory during the war that started with the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel<\/a>. Around 80% of Gaza\u2019s population of 2.3 million has been displaced and U.N. officials say parts of the territory are experiencing famine<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Critics say Israel\u2019s military campaign amounts to genocide, and the government of South Africa formally accused the country of genocide<\/a> in January when it asked the United Nations\u2019 top court to order a halt to Israeli military operations in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Israel has denied the genocide charge<\/a> and told the International Court of Justice it is doing everything it can to protect Gaza\u2019s civilian population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jabr is not the first employee at the hospital, which was renamed from NYU Medical Center after a major donation from Republican Party donor and billionaire Kenneth Langone, to be fired over comments about the Mideast conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A prominent researcher who directed the hospital\u2019s cancer center was fired<\/a> after he posted anti-Hamas political cartoons including caricatures of Arab people. That researcher, biologist Benjamin Neel, has since filed suit against the hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jabr\u2019s firing also was not her first time in the spotlight. When she was an 11-year-old in Louisiana, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit<\/a> on her behalf after she was forced to accept a Bible from the principal of her public school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is not my first rodeo,\u201d she told the Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n