Doctor who slammed Gaza violence supported 9/11 attacks

Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert, who volunteered in Gaza during IDF offensive, gave dozens of interviews to international media as 'impartial observer,' despite his past support for al-Qaeda's terror attacks

Shahar Ginosar
Published: 02.04.09, 10:38 / Israel News

Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert entered the Gaza Strip several days before Israel launched its military offensive there. In the course of the operation Gilbert spoke to numerous media outlets, presented himself as "an objective physician" and repeatedly condemned the IDF's actions in Gaza.

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However, it recently became known that Gilbert might have been less impartial than he claimed to be. The only Western doctor allowed into the Strip during the fighting is a member of the Norwegian socialist party Red, and a man who in the past expressed support for al-Qaeda's September 11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York.

In an interview to Dagbladet newspaper in wake of the terror attacks, Gilbert said: "The attack on New York did not come as a surprise with the politics the West has followed the last decades. I am upset by the terrorist attack, but I am at least as upset over the suffering that the US has caused. It is in this context that 5000 dead has to be seen.

"If the US government has a legitimate right to bomb and kill civilians in Iraq, the oppressed has a moral right to attack the US with the weapons they may create as well. Dead civilians are the same whether they are Americans, Palestinians or Iraqis."

When asked if he supported a terrorist attack against the US he answered: "Terror is a poor weapon, but my answer is yes, within the context I have mentioned."

During the Gaza operation Gilbert gave dozens of interviews to leading television networks such as ABC, CNN, al-Jazeera and Sky News. Wearing a white robe and standing at a corridor of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the doctor reported of the IDF's "deliberate attacks" against women and children. He also blamed Israel for waging "an all-out war against Gaza civilians."

When asked by the BBC what was his response, as a "neutral observer" to Israel's' claims it was only out to target Hamas, Gilbert replied: "This is a totally ridiculous statement. Of the hundreds of injured we've treated, only two were fighters."

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