Occupational Health: Bearing Witness to Palestinian Lives | Palestine Square | ميدان فلسطين

14.11.15

Occupational Health: Bearing Witness to Palestinian Lives | Palestine Square | ميدان فلسطين: “As leaders from Washington to Westminster stood aside and watched the slaughter with cynical passivity, Gilbert sounded the alarm, alerting the world to the crisis unfolding before his eyes.” That is how Max Blumenthal, author of Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel (2013) describes the courageous act of my Norwegian friend and colleague, Dr. Mads Gilbert, in dashing to Gaza in the summer of 2014 to volunteer his medical expertise and acute witnessing talents at al-Shifa Hospital. There, he experienced firsthand “[t]he 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.” Those are the seeming contradictions at the heart of the massacre of Shujai’ieh, “The Land of the Brave,” and Gaza at large standing today as a testament to the inhumanity of humanity in the 21st century.