Silly Little Country: Nice Catch by Charles Johnson/CAMERA

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Nice Catch by Charles Johnson/CAMERA

I was watching a news report from a Gaza hospital yesterday and an interview with a Scandinavian doctor painting a rather dire picture of conditions; it seemed quite convincing, and he even described himself as a Westerner, as if to suggest he would not mislead, Though I wondered what he was doing there, and was mindful of the fact that the report going out was utterly under the control of Hamas, and had to be so considered.
Charles Johnson has learned a little more about the good doctor.

Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor in Gaza, is all over the mainstream media, claiming that Israel is indiscriminately and purposely murdering civilians. He’s given interviews to the BBC, CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, the Independent, Sky News, and the New York Times, among others.

And in 2001, shortly after the 9/11 terror attacks, this supposedly impartial Norwegian doctor (actually a radical Marxist member of Norway’s Red party) expressed support for the hijackers.
...
Of course, not a single mainstream media report on the creep mentions any of this.

From CAMERA, linked by Johnson,

Gilbert is a radical Marxist and a member of the political Red (Rodt) party, a revolutionary socialist party in Norway. He has been a pro-Palestinian activist since the 1970's and travelled to Lebanon in support of the Palestinians during the first Lebanon war in 1982. He has long been a vocal opponent of Israel and the U.S. Gilbert has acknowledged that he cannot separate politics from medicine, stating, "there is little in medicine that is not politics." He even criticizes the group Doctors Without Borders for providing medical assistance to both sides in a conflict instead of taking a strong stance and supporting only one party. In a 2006 article in Nordlys, journalist Ivan Kristoffersen lamented the fact that Gilbert allows his humanitarian efforts to be politicized by his radical agenda.

Of course, he might be telling the truth at all times, but one has reason to doubt, and it is appalling that the press simply gives him, with utter apparent credulity, a voice.
And as someone of Norwegian ancestry, I am horrified at this: