Hesen Jabr, a 34-year-old Palestinian-American woman, was recently fired from NYU Langone Health after linking her work experience to suffering mothers from Gaza. Hesen Jabr was a labor and delivery nurse for 10 years. Her role frequently included caring for mothers who had lost their children to complications in pregnancy.

Because of her overwhelming compassion and dedication, she was awarded a certificate for providing outstanding care to her patients who were suffering from prenatal loss. During her acceptance speech, she stated, “It pains me to see the women from my country going through unimaginable losses themselves during the current genocide in Gaza,” as heard in the video recording of the May 7th speech that she posted on multiple social media platforms. “This award is deeply personal to me for those reasons.”

The day after the ceremony, Jabr went to clock in her shift at the hospital but was instead met with an unpleasant surprise. She wrote that she was “dragged to an office” where she was greeted with a termination letter and was quickly escorted out of the building.

Later on, Jabr would continue to defend her speech in an interview with The New York Times. She said that talking about the war was “relevant” to the speech and that she never meant any harm. “It was an award for bereavement; it was for grieving mothers,” she said.

Surprisingly, Jabr wasn’t the only employee from the hospital that made “inappropriate comments” on the war in Gaza. Biology researcher, Benjamin Neel, was fired from the same hospital for sharing cartoons which featured offensive caricatures of the Arabic. Neel plans to sue the hospital over his termination.