Yesterday we ran a report on Mads Gilbert’s lecture in Chicago on the Gaza onslaught. Gilbert was one of two Norwegian doctors to work at Shifa hospital in Gaza City for twelve days in January. I went to hear him at New York University yesterday afternoon and had these observations:
–An anesthesiologist, Gilbert served in Gaza out of solidarity with the Palestinians. He has been doing this kind of doctoring since he worked in Beirut in the 1982 invasion. He said the Palestinian doctors are excellent, but he was only trying to give them support and report to the world on what he saw.
–Hospital treatment for Palestinians reflects “structural apartheid." When an Israeli is badly injured he is airlifted to the best medical care to be found in the state. Modern hospitals are not available to Palestinians. Once when 17 medical vehicles formed a caravan to go to Egypt to get out difficult cases, having informed Israeli authorities, Israeli forces fired machine guns across their path telling them to turn back. They did.
–The pictures Gilbert showed were out of an inferno, literally. He said that he has never had such a traumatic experience in all his work on several continents. His pictures were haunting. Most were of maimed children he had treated, some were of maimed adults. Scorched limbs. A ghastly exit wound in a girl's back. Pulverizing injuries made, he suspects by Dense Inert Metal Explosives, which cause a horrific pressure wave over a 100 meter diameter but no further. Ghastly.
"I would call this a moral disaster for Israel."
–He did 15 to 20 interviews a day from the front of Shifa hospital, and they were as exhausting as the emergency work. He believes the Israelis jammed his phone when he was to go on CNN. He cried at night in the dorm room he was in. When he saw a child paralyzed by automatic weapons attack, a girl of four, he went to his friend, a Palestinian doctor, in anger and desperation, saying How can this go on? The doctor calmly explained to him, “We have no human rights. And that sums it up. They have no human rights.” It is difficult to argue with this statement in view of the overwhelming evidence provided of indifference to civilian casualties.
–During the Q-and-A, a man with a Russian accent tried to take Gilbert on. He said that Gilbert had said that 5 out of 10 Israeli soldiers killed during the onslaught were killed by friendly fire. Well: you are willing to accept in that instance that the killings are accidental. Why are you not willing to make the same concession in the case of Palestinian children killed when the IDF was taking on Hamas fighters? Gilbert responded that it was an issue of scale. If you say 200 children or 400 children, depending on the IDF or the Palestinians, what does it matter, that is indifference to civilian life. And 90 percent of the victims were civilians; that he saw for himself, he asserted.
–Gilbert said that the Israelis dropped 100 bombs in the first four minutes of the attack on December 27, 2008, and killed 260 people in those minutes. A week or so later Shimon Peres said that the operation had been 90 percent according to plan and that its purpose was to cause the Palestinian people to lose their appetite for firing rockets at Israel. This is collective punishment, Gilbert said, and a war crime. Israel does not understand that so long as there is one Palestinian left alive, he will resist the occupation.
–The other memorable member of the audience was Code Pink member Helen Schiff. She has been to Gaza and I believe she is Jewish. She has silver hair and seemed to cry even as she challenged her audience to speak out. “We have to influence our foreign policy. There is a huge opportunity right now. Even in the Jewish community. Once the Jewish community begins to split on this question… a sea change will take place.” And people who have been intimidated by the Jewish community by the suggestion that to criticize Israel is anti-Semitic will begin to speak out.
–Gilbert also addressed the Israel lobby issue. Many Jews are coming to his talks, he said, and he urged all Americans to speak out to move Obama. Nearly 50 years ago you had a president who had the courage to fly into a walled-off place, and say, I am a Berliner, in solidarity. "I wish Obama can fly into Gaza and say I am a Palestinian"
