An Australian state health minister has offered to apologize to one of the victims of the Bondi Beach terror attack after her Jewish-sounding name was changed by hospital staff and her religion was erased from her hospital identification.
Rosalia Shikhverg was taken to Liverpool Hospital in Sydney’s suburbs for a head injury caused by shrapnel as a result of the mass shooting during a “Chanukah by the Sea” event on Dec. 14.
She said she was admitted under her name, with her Jewish identity recorded, something fairly routine in the country. But without her consent, hospital staff told her before an operation that they were providing her with a new band and were changing her name to “Karen Jones,” with no religious identity, to keep prying media away.
Shikhverg, though, told Sky News Australia this week that she believes the change was made to protect her from hospital staff, given an incident last year at Sydney’s Bankstown Hospital, in which two nurses were suspended after appearing in a video threatening Israeli patients.
“In my opinion, they were afraid of staff, not media,” Shikhverg said.
Ryan Park, New South Wales health minister, disputed that charge.
“I want to be clear about this: It wasn’t about protecting her from staff or staff from different ethnic backgrounds,” he told Sky News Australia. “We were obviously, at that time, dealing with a heightened security threat in and around Sydney, and there was a decision made at a local level that we would try and do that in order to protect her. It was not done with any ill intent.”
Park, though, did not confirm that the decision was made to protect Shikhverg from the media, saying instead that “it was more to do with external issues.”
He stated that “we were just trying to protect her privacy in an environment that was challenging for Jewish community members at the time. We didn’t want people coming in and trying to engage with her or threaten her, or make any comments to people who had already been through hell.”
There is no evidence that any other Bondi Beach victims had their names or identities changed, nor that such procedures are part of hospital policy in high-profile medical emergencies. There was also no information available as to why “Karen” was used as a first name, owing to the international stigma it has had these past few years, referring to a middle-class woman perceived as entitled or excessively demanding.
Park said, “I don’t want Jewish people, in any way, shape or form, to feel at all threatened coming into a single New South Wales hospital,” stressing that “Jewish people are safe in Sydney hospitals.”
Park said he has offered to meet with Shikhverg to apologize and offer an explanation.
