Norwegian physician Mads Gilbert is a familiar face to anyone who has covered Israel’s military operations in Gaza going back to Operation Cast Lead in 2008/09.
The Independent has published an open letter from Gilbert, who is currently in Gaza’s Shifa hospital:
The last night was extreme. The “ground invasion” of Gaza resulted in scores and carloads with maimed, torn apart, bleeding, shivering, dying… All sorts of injured Palestinians, all ages, all civilians, all innocent.
Time and time again, however, Gilbert has been exposed by HonestReporting and others as a radical Marxist anti-Israel propagandist rather than a credible and objective medical practitioner. Yet he continues to appear in the international media. Even UNRWA’s spokesperson Chris Gunness encouraged journalists in this latest Gaza conflict to interview Gilbert, leading to a call from Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, for Gunness to be suspended.
NGO Monitor profiles Gilbert, referring to Operation Cast Lead:
During the fighting and afterward, Gilbert repeatedly and falsely accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilians and invented allegations of use of illegal weapons, while making no mention of evidence that Al-Shifa hospital had been used for military purposes and also shielded the Hamas leadership. There is also evidence that he helped stage emergency room scenes for a “propaganda effect.”
Dr. Gilbert is a former member of the fringe left Red Party in Norway, which has its roots in the country’s Communist Party. Gilbert stood as the Red Party’s candidate in local elections in the town ofTromsoe in 2007.
In addition, the centrality of his ideology was highlighted in comments following Al-Qaida’s terrorist attacks on USA on September 11, 2001, in which Dr Gilbert expressed sympathy with the terrorists. Days after the atrocity, in an interview for the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet Gilbert said “The attack on New York did not come as a surprise after the policy that the West has led during the last decades…The oppressed also have a moral right to attack the USA with any weapon they can come up with.” When asked directly in the same interview, “Do you support a terror attack against the USA?,” Gilbert replied, “Terror is a bad weapon but the answer is yes within the context which I have mentioned.”
We asked this question back in 2009, again in 2012 and we are asking it again. Why are media outlets relying on a radical Marxist anti-Israel propagandist for comment?
Featured image: CC BY Bjarne Thune via Wikimedia Commons
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
