Tag Archives: Mads Gilbert
Fighting Israel with a camera and a stethoscope
Raymond Deane, The Electronic Intifada, 31 July 2015
Night in Gaza by Mads Gilbert (Skyscraper Publications)
Since 2006, Israel has launched four merciless assaults on the besieged and defenseless Gaza Strip. After Operation Cast Lead in late 2008 and early 2009, with its 1,400 Palestinian fatalities, the Norwegian surgeon Dr. Mads Gilbert published the best-selling Eyes in Gaza.
That book, a record of his and co-author Erik Fosse’s experiences in Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital during the massacre, made him the object of a relentless campaign of defamation by Israel and its fellow-travellers.
In July 2014 Operation Protective Edge, the most recent Israeli onslaught, inflicted more than 2,200 Palestinian fatalities, including 551 children. This attack was also partly witnessed by Gilbert; in its wake the Israeli authorities did not stop at defamation, but imposed a permanent ban on his entry to Gaza, reportedly for “security” reasons.
In the preface to his new book Night in Gaza, Gilbert comments: “When a pen, a camera and a stethoscope are seen as security threats, we know we are dealing with a regime that is afraid of the truth and that believes power confers rights.”
Clearly, however, the ban on Gilbert stems less from fear of the “small, black Sony … compact digital camera” that he carried wherever he went, even into the operating theater, than hostility to his unapologetically political stance.
Not neutral
“The medical profession cannot … be detached from society,” he tells us in his preface. “I am not neutral. I have taken a side. This book is a plea: in favor of the Palestinians.”
A photograph of a Palestinian nurse giving the victory salute as he deals with an emergency is captioned: “The health workers see themselves as part of the popular resistance.” And in his final, valedictory chapter, he proclaims that “the social aspect of [medical] work … means supporting all measures to reduce social inequalities … it is what makes the medical profession a political tool.”
Of course, the State of Israel also sees the medical profession as a political tool, periodically sending teams of doctors, soldiers and press photographers to the sites of natural disasters (Nepal, Haiti, the Philippines) while hindering alleviation of the disaster it has created in Gaza.
An open letter for the people in Gaza
The Lancet, Volume 384, No. 9941, p397–398, 2 August 2014
Lancet Mads Gilbert PIIS0140673614610448April 12, 2012
Eyes In Gaza: A Presentation by Dr. Mads Gilbert
“What We Saw, What We Can Do”
April 12, 2012, 7:00 pm
180 Science Hall, UW-Madison Campus
Book signing to follow
Dr. Mads Gilbert, one of two Norwegian doctors who remained in Gaza under fire during Israeli Operation Cast Lead, will be in Madison to speak about his experiences. Both he and his colleague, Dr. Erik Fosse, testified as expert witnesses at subsequent Human Rights Committee Sessions held at the United Nations in Geneva after the attack. In January, 2012 Dr. Gilbert returned to Gaza where he met with his colleagues from Shifa Hospital, friends, and many of the patients he operated on, including the girl below.
Dr. Gilbert will address the US role in Operation Cast Lead, the use of illegal weapons on a civilian population, the ethics of weapons sales to countries that have used or tested weapons illegally, and the aftermath of Cast Lead with the continuing siege and blockade of the Gaza Strip 3 years later. It will include details of Dr. Gilbert’s January visit to Gaza, and will also look at the broader, regional context of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle within the “Arab Spring”.
Mads Gilbert is a specialist in anesthesiology and a leader of the emergency medicine department of University Hospital of North Norway, and has been a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Tromsø since 1995. Dr. Gilbert co-founded NORWAC, a Norwegian-Palestinian humanitarian aid organization. He worked in an underground Palestinian refugee camp hospital in Beirut during the 1982 Israeli invasion and bombardment of Lebanon.
Dr. Gilbert will be here as part of a U.S. tour discussing the book that he co-authored with Dr. Fosse: Eyes in Gaza, which is available at Rainbow Bookstore. A book signing will follow the talk.