A Jewish columnist from Amsterdam said on Monday that she was denied medical care by a nurse who had refused to take off a pro-Palestinian pin shaped like a fist.
Jonath Weinberger, a dual Belgian-Israeli citizen who moved to the Netherlands in 2024, recounted the September incident in a column for the Dutch Jewish news site Jonet.
“When I entered the room where the doctor and a nurse were waiting for me, I was shocked. The nurse was wearing a large pin shaped like a fist in the colors of the Palestinian flag,” she wrote.
“Instinctively, I whispered to the paramedic that I didn’t feel safe being treated by someone displaying such a political statement. He cautiously asked the nurse if she could remove her ‘Pally’ pin,” Weinberger added.
According to the columnist, the nurse “reacted indignantly, muttered that she no longer wished to treat me and walked out of the room.” A different nurse had to be found, “even though I was in urgent need of medical help,” she wrote.
Weinberger said her fears stemmed from widely publicized incidents on TikTok in which anti-Israel nurses threatened to kill “Zionist” patients.
“As a Zionist Jew who also holds Israeli citizenship, you feel very unsafe in a moment like that,” Weinberger wrote, noting that while “my Zionist beliefs may not be immediately apparent ... my family name makes my Jewish background obvious.”
“It wasn’t even a small Palestinian flag, but an actual fist—a symbol of militant resistance—and that doesn’t belong in a hospital. A hospital should be a neutral, safe space for everyone,” she continued.
Weinberger said she is considering filing a complaint with the hospital—the name of which she declined to disclose—once she has made a full physical and mental recovery.
The Hague-based Center for Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI), the Dutch Jewish community’s watchdog group, recorded more than 400 antisemitic incidents in 2024—a record figure that surpassed the previous year’s all-time high by 11%.
