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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x255912Norwegian doctor's presentation on Gaza attack leaves Chicago audience 'shell shocked'
Reader Rie Graham has sent us this report from Dr. Mads Gilbert's presentation in Chicago last night. The Norwegian physician is touring the US talking about his experience working in Gaza's al-Shifa hospital during the war this past December and January. Graham writes:
I was a bit nervous ten minutes before the program was to start and only 20 people were seated in the cavernous Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago. Perhaps people really have forgotten Gaza. Maybe they don’t want to be reminded that for 23 days, Israel carried out a planned, brutal assault that flattened buildings and shattered lives. Maybe they don’t want to hear from someone who spent two weeks in Gaza elbow deep in blood, repairing small bodies and comforting weeping relatives. Maybe people have moved on – eager for a new diplomatic initiative or perhaps onto the next tragedy – Afghanistan and Pakistan where the blood seems more fresh. Maybe they are more interested in the work of pirates rather than those who use governmental power to attack civilians and then continue to hold them under siege so reconstruction efforts are hampered.
I was wrong about the interest. Within the next half hour, the chapel slowly filled with people, perhaps reaching 200. Lots of college students, women in headscarves, and Arab families – young children in tow – sat spellbound as Mads Gilbert (pictured right in al-Shifa Hospital , photo from the Lancet), a Norwegian doctor who has spent several decades working with Palestinians, shared with the audience his most recent experience working at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza at the end of December when the timed Israeli assault began.
I was struck by Dr. Gilbert’s tone and manner. He spoke to the audience by walking up and down the aisle, looking at people directly and inviting them into his story. He was upfront about his politics and sympathies – against all killing of civilians, in solidarity with the oppressed (the Palestinians) and sympathetic to all who resist military occupation (be they Israeli or Palestinian). Occupation is the disease, said the doctor, and until it is ended, the patients (Palestinian and Israeli) will not achieve a healthy life.
Dr. Gilbert warned of the graphic nature of some of his photos, but explained that to understand the crisis in Gaza one must look at the realities. The most graphic, he explained were not necessarily the bloody stumps and ripped apart bodies (although I had a hard time looking at those), but the sorrowful, vacant look in some of the eyes of the children, the utter grief in the eyes of a mother, the look of submission in the eyes of an old man. One photo of a Palestinian farmer who lost a hand in an explosion from a missile, was upsetting, not because he lost his hand (which thankfully wasn’t shown in the photo) but because of his look of utter loss. “What will become of my life now,” said the farmer to Dr. Gilbert. “All I ever wanted was to farm my land. I am not political, nor care about the different factions. I just wanted to provide for my family. How can I do that now?”
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http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/04/chicago-audience-shell-shocked-by-doctors-presentation-of-gaza-under-attack.html
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