Guest
Dr Mads Gilbert is a veteran Norwegian physician in the NORWAC (Norwegian Aid Committee) emergency team for Gaza. He has worked with the Palestinians for nearly 45 years as a specialist in emergency medicine and anesthesiology. He was in Lebanon in 1982 when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) invaded southern Lebanon. He was in Gaza, too, offering emergency medical services during the Israeli bombardments of 2006, 2009, 2012, and 2014. He speaks to me from his hotel room in Cairo, Egypt, where he is waiting for an opportunity to enter Gaza through the Rafah border crossing to join and assist Palestinian healthcare workers who are faced with a dire situation and whose hospitals are hanging by a thread in the face of the weeks-long IDF onslaught. Seventy-six-year-old Dr Mads Gilbert, popularly known as Dr Mads, tells Indian journalist Ullekh NP that the current attack on Palestinians is the worst he has seen in his lifetime. “Mind you, I was in Beirut in 1982. I thought that would be my worst experience. I was in Gaza in at least four previous bombings. Every time I thought it could not get worse. But this attack on Gaza, I think, is the most dramatic, and the most vicious bombing we have seen in modern history,“ he says in this interview. “This is by far the worst, the most brutal, the most extensive, and the most lethal attack that I have seen in my 45 years working with the Palestinians and their healthcare system,“ he says.
