"I HAD TO WRITE"

PREFACE TESTIMONY

by Norwegian Doctor Mads Gilbert to his book "Night in Gaza"

"This book is a testimony, not an academic thesis or a neutral journalistic report.

     This book is my account of what I witnessed in Gaza in the summer of 2014. It is the story of some of the human cost paid by the Palestinian people for enduring the Israeli occupation. For almost seventy years, they have been living under an increasingly brutal apartheid regime and constant military attacks. Many older Palestinians still remember what happened in 1948  in the Nakba, the Palestinian Catastrophe, when the state of Israel was created on their land. Large parts of the population in what was once Palestine were driven from their homes, towns and villages by armed forces and terror. Most of the Palestinians in
Gaza are refugees in their own country.

     The elderly generation who remember the Nakba say a part of my life and  that the attack this summer was worse than in 1948.

     I have been carrying out medical solidarity work for the Palestinians since 1981. It has become a part of my life and a great source of joy, sorrow, inspiration and disappointment. For the the past fifteen years, I have been working in Gaza with the Palestinian health service, making at least one trip a year to teach, organise projects, perform research, learn or carry out actual emergency medical treatment, especially in periods of war. Since 2006, I have witnessed at close hand four attacks by the Israeli military on the population of Gaza. Each time it happens I feel anxiety coming me over me in Norway. I know that I must go..."

..."What I experience was awful,  and it was immense. The sounds of bombs and screaming, bodies torn to pieces and a society reduced to rubble, but I also saw camaraderie, dignity, human courage and unflinching resolve.

     I had no choice but to write. 

     The story of the Palestinians is best told by the Palestinians themselves. They rarely appear in the mainstream Western news sources, especially not in the United States, where the well-oiled and loudly voiced official Israeli account dominates, leaving no space for telling about the Palestinians' suffering or for self critical analysis, just the usual claims about 'Palestinian terrorism' and  'Israeli self-defense'.

This is all that I will write of Mads Gilbert TESTIMONY...his words you must read or listen to yourself. I simply wanted to share a part for I find this man beyond incredible and humane...

Oh, one last paragraph...When a pen, a camera, and a stethoscope are seen as security threats, we know we are dealing with a regime that is afraid of the truth and that believes power confers rights,"

Dr. Mads Gilbert-A Night in Gaza

Dr. Gilbert, I do hope that you do not find my writing parts of your  book as a way to take your work. I only want to use your work to shed light upon the world as to what you are doing for I find you one of the most noble person upon this earth.. You have much to share and teach to a world that needs to opens its eyes and its hearts. I thank you so very much...

Maria Juarez Beam (Boheme)

Musical Selection: We Are the World...We are Palestinian Children