Here's an extraordinary letter that the Lancet saw fit to publish last week:
We are doctors and scientists, who spend our lives developing means to care and protect health and lives. We are also informed people; we teach the ethics of our professions, together with the knowledge and practice of it. We all have worked in and known the situation of Gaza for years.
On the basis of our ethics and practice, we are denouncing what we witness in the aggression of Gaza by Israel.
We ask our colleagues, old and young professionals, to denounce this Israeli aggression. We challenge the perversity of a propaganda that justifies the creation of an emergency to masquerade a massacre, a so-called “defensive aggression”. In reality it is a ruthless assault of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity. We wish to report the facts as we see them and their implications on the lives of the people.....
The massacre in Gaza spares no one, and includes the disabled and sick in hospitals, children playing on the beach or on the roof top, with a large majority of non-combatants. Hospitals, clinics, ambulances, mosques, schools, and press buildings have all been attacked, with thousands of private homes bombed, clearly directing fire to target whole families killing them within their homes, depriving families of their homes by chasing them out a few minutes before destruction....
Israel's behaviour has insulted our humanity, intelligence, and dignity as well as our professional ethics and efforts. Even those of us who want to go and help are unable to reach Gaza due to the blockade.
This “defensive aggression” of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity must be stopped.
Additionally, should the use of gas be further confirmed, this is unequivocally a war crime for which, before anything else, high sanctions will have to be taken immediately on Israel with cessation of any trade and collaborative agreements with Europe....
We register with dismay that only 5% of our Israeli academic colleagues signed an appeal to their government to stop the military operation against Gaza. We are tempted to conclude that with the exception of this 5%, the rest of the Israeli academics are complicit in the massacre and destruction of Gaza. We also see the complicity of our countries in Europe and North America in this massacre and the impotence once again of the international institutions and organisations to stop this massacre.
One of the chief signatories is Mads Gilbert. For some background on Gilbert, see this Harry's Place post from 2009.
The Israeli Ministry of Health in response identified the letter as “bordering on blood libel". Read more here at NGO Monitor:
Political advocacy NGOs that claim a medical mandate, as well as affiliated individuals, have been active in publicly and falsely condemning Israel’s self-defense measures in Gaza during July 2014.
These NGOs and activists: 1) demonize Israel and use hate speech under the guise of medical expertise and scientific fact; 2) deny Israel’s obligation to defend its citizens; 3) present political analysis, legal declarations, and speculations regarding Israel’s military operations and weaponry, far beyond the scope of any medical expertise they might possess; and 4) promote distorted and false narratives.
The Lancet has a history of this kind of thing of course. Remember the Iraq death count report?
I believe Mads Gilbert has been interviewed on TV quite a few times with no indication of his background.
Posted by: Bob-B | July 30, 2014 at 02:29 PM
17 of the 24 signatories are Italian - the nice people who brought you fascism. Having said that, Mussolini and the Fascists were not anti-Semitic in the beginning but only became so when they threw their lot in with Hitler. If anything that makes them even more morally degenerate. At least Hitler was sincere in his anti-Semitism - Mussolini simply adopted it to impress the big man. However, as I understand it the Italians in general were never very enthusiastic about abusing the Jews.
That was then and this is now. It seems that, along with most of the rest of Europe, anti-Semitism is now a core belief of most of the Left. I used to work in an office with a thirty-something left-wing Italian. He would have been horrified if you called him racist but he once said - within my earshot - that Israel was responsible for all the problems in the Middle East and that Iran should wipe them out. I asked my line manager to move me from that bay before I beat him to a bloody pulp.
Posted by: Adrian Stanley | August 03, 2014 at 07:48 PM