The great Mads Gilbert is back in Norway. Here’s a portion of his speech, translated and sent along to us.The video includes his thank you to his hospital, University Hospital of North Norway, and the lines in my headline.
I know you applaud for Gaza. I know you applaud for those who are there, the heroes of Gaza.
This will be no easy appeal to make, because I am now overcome by the mildness, the warmth, the safety, the absence of bombs, jets, blood and death. And then all that we’ve had to keep inside comes to the surface – so forgive me if sometimes I break.
I thought when I got home and met my daughters Siri and Torbjørn, my son-in-law and my grandkids Jenny and Torje, that it is such a mild country we live in.
It so good, with a kind of humanity in all relationships, because we actually built this country on respect for diversity, respect for the individual, respect for human dignity.
And imagine being back in 1945. And I beg to be understood when I say that I am not comparing the German Nazi regime with Israel. I do not.
But I compare occupation with occupation. Imagine that we in 1945 did not win the liberation struggle, did not throw out the occupier, could not see a bright future or believe our kids had a future. Imagine the occupier remaining in our country, taking it piece by piece, for decades upon decades. And banished us to the leanest areas. Took the fish in the sea, took the land, took the water, and we became more and more confined.
And here in Tromsø we were actually imprisoned, because here there was so much resistance to the occupation. So we are imprisoned for seven years, because in an election we had chosen the most resilient, those who would not accept the occupation.
Then after seven years of confinement in our city, Tromsø, the occupier began to bomb us. And they began to bomb us the day we made a political alliance with those in the other confined parts of occupied Norway, to say that we Norwegians would stand together against the occupier. Then they began to bomb us.
They bombed our university hospital, then the medical center, then killed our ambulance workers, they bombed schools where those who had lost their homes were trying to seek shelter. Then they cut the power and bombed our power plant. Then they shut off the water supply. What would we have done?
Would we have given up, waved the white flag? No. No, we would not. And this is the situation in Gaza.
This is not a battle between terrorism and democracy. Hamas is not the enemy Israel is fighting. Israel is waging a war against the Palestinian people’s will to resist. The unbending determination not to submit to the occupation!
It is the Palestinian people’s dignity and humanity that will not accept that they are treated as third, fourth, fifth-ranking people.
In 1938, the Nazis called the Jews “Untermenschen,” subhuman. Today, Palestinians in the West Bank, in Gaza, in the Diaspora are treated as Untermensch, as subhumans who can be bombed, killed, slaughtered by their thousands, without any of those in power reacting.
So I returned home to my free country – and this country is free because we had a resistance movement, because we said that occupied nations have the right to resist, even with weapons. It’s stated in international law.
You are permitted to fight the occupier even with weapons.
Nobody wants to be occupied!
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well spoken and a selfless heart
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i think most people use ww2 as the example
because it has been held up (as an example)
to public view more than any other injustice
thus making it a well known ref. to most
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G-d Bless
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Let us consider this so called Occupation. What was its genesis. Was there always an Occupation? These are things that one has to consider in able to form a legitimate understanding of the situation. Before 1967, and indeed between 1948 and 1967, there was no Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Only after Israel seized these territories in the defensive war of 1967 were they Occupied. (As an aside, is it not interesting to note that there was no effort to establish a Palestinian State between 1948 and 1967? Just saying…..).
Israel has been trying to find a just dispensation of these territories ever since, which would somehow reconcile Israeli security needs with legitimate Palestinian aspirations. This has been difficult to do for a variety of reasons, not enough space here to mention. And indeed one can cogently argue that the West Bank and Gaza are only partially Occupied at present, both being led by their own elected representatives (the so called “moderate” PLO which heads the West Bank, and the genocidally psychopathis HAMAS heading Gaza). So to reduce this complicated issue down to the big bad evil Occupation of the Israelis is stupid and insipid. But why deal with nuance when one can just deal with sound bites and catch phrases?
Yes, this is a crucial point that the floods of propaganda against Hamas and Hezbollah obscure and are meant to obscure, irrespective of the extent to which specific propaganda claims are true or false. Israel hates the Islamists not because they seek to establish a caliphate, not because they oppress women, not because they advocate barbaric punishments, and so on and so forth, but simply because they are among “the most resilient” in fighting the occupation. Israel has nothing against Islamists who accept the occupation (if such exist). If the majority of Palestinians were Buddhists, we would hear endless propaganda about the evils of Buddhism. Less hypothetically, if the leading forces of resistance to the occupation were not Islamists but secular leftists such as the PFLP then we would again hear much less about Islam — instead Palestinians would be demonized as dangerous reds (like Jews used to be). Is the Shabak any softer on PFLP militants out of appreciation for their progressive positions on social issues? The very idea is ridiculous.
WOW! WOW! WOW! The analogies that Dr. Gilbert uses to relate the Palestinian struggle will resonate with many many people. He captures and translates it with incredible clarity.
Has he been interviewed by any MSM outlets in the U.S.?
For Hamas, the choice wasn’t so much between peace and war as between slow strangulation and a war that had a chance, however slim, of loosening the squeeze. It sees itself in a battle for its survival. Its future in Gaza hangs on the outcome. Like Israel, it’s been careful to set rather limited aims, goals to which much of the international community is sympathetic. The primary objective is that Israel honour three past agreements: the Shalit prisoner exchange, including the release of the re-arrested prisoners; the November 2012 ceasefire, which calls for an end to Gaza’s closure; and the April 2014 reconciliation agreement, which would allow the Palestinian government to pay salaries in Gaza, staff its borders, receive much needed construction materials and open the pedestrian crossing with Egypt……..
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n16/nathan-thrall/hamass-chances