Propagandist Doctor Returns in the New York Times

Mads Gilbert returns to Gaza's Shifa Hospital.

By Simon Plosker November 21, 2012

While Hamas terrorists have gone underground to avoid the IDF, another distasteful figure has reemerged in Gaza, interviewed by the New York Times:

Dr. Mads Gilbert, a professor at the University Hospital of North Norway, said things were better organized this time than during Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s three-week assault on Gaza in 2008-9, also waged to stop rocket attacks. “They have learned a lot from the last attack,” Dr. Gilbert said. “So far the capacity is up to the numbers. But I think we haven’t seen the peak.”

A fairly innocuous comment perhaps but just who is Mads Gilbert?

During Operation Cast Lead in 2009, Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert, portrayed as the epitome of courage under fire, appeared on television screens around the world and in the pages of many newspapers, including the BBCCBS, CNN, ABC, Independent, Sky News, and New York Times. Only too happy to slander Israel in the world media, Gilbert accused Israel of testing new and deadly weapons on Palestinian civilians and smeared Israel for the 1982 Sabra and Shatilla massacre in the Palestinian refugee camps that was committed by Christian Phalangists.

At the time, Melanie Phillips wrote:

Gilbert was presented as just an ordinary doctor. But Gilbert appears not to be just an ordinary doctor. He is a political activist and member of the Norwegian Maoist ‘Red’ party. Not only is he viscerally hostile to Israel and a long-standing activist in the Palestinian ‘solidarity’ movement, but he even supported the 9/11 attacks. A reader posting on this website — which features a video of further inflammatory remarks by Gilbert — provided his own translation of Gilbert’s remarks to this effect, as well as Gilbert’s Wikipedia entry which contained the following (translated from Norwegian):

Shortly after the attack on the World Trade Center in the United States in September 2001 stirred the excitement when Gilbert defended oppressed moral right to attack the United States. ‘If the U.S. government has a legitimate right to bomb and kill civilians in Iraq, they have also suppressed a moral right to attack the United States with the weapons they had to create. Dead civilians are the same whether they are Americans, Palestinians or Iraqis.’ On the direct question whether he supported the terrorist attacks on the United States, Gilbert said: ‘Terror is a bad weapon, but the answer is yes, within the context I have mentioned.’

Mads Gilbert is a radical Marxist anti-Israel propagandist and the media should think very carefully before relying on him for comment.

[sc:bottomsignup ]

© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025

Simon Plosker

Simon Plosker

With over two decades of experience in various non-governmental organizations in the UK and Israel, Simon Plosker returned to HonestReporting in October 2022 as Editorial Director having previously been part of the organization’s management team from 2005 to 2020.

Prior to his first spell at HonestReporting, Simon worked in Israel for NGO Monitor, BICOM, and served for a short period in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit. He was Managing Editor of the Geneva-based NGO United Nations Watch for two years before moving back to the frontline defending Israel from media bias.

Simon has a BSoc.Sc in International Studies and Political Science from the University of Birmingham and an MSc in History of International Relations from the London School of Economics. He immigrated to Israel in 2001 from London.

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