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Jerusalem- Highlighting Mads Gilbert’s background of ideological extremism, NGO Monitor reminds journalists and others of his radical political and ideological biases. Gilbert is currently in Gaza promoting anti-Israel propaganda.

“We urge media outlets and human rights organizations to treat Dr. Gilbert’s comments and assessments from Gaza with great caution,” said NGO Monitor president, Prof. Gerald Steinberg. “By justifying terror, supporting Hamas and fueling the conflict, NORWAC and Mads Gilbert have violated the Hippocratic Oath – ‘first, do not harm’.”

In 2009, Dr. Gilbert traveled to Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital as a member of the Norwegian Aid Committee, NORWAC, an NGO funded by the Norwegian government ostensibly to provide health care services in partnership with the Palestinian Ministry of Health. 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 of Tromsoe 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.”

For NGO Monitor’s detailed report on NGO allegations regarding the Gaza conflict, click here.

See also: NGO MALPRACTICE – THE POLITICAL ABUSE OF MEDICINE, MORALITY, AND SCIENCE, Gerald M. Steinberg and Naftali Balanson, NGO Monitor Monograph Series 11, July 29, 2013 (pp.44-5)