Mads Gilbert

Gilbert has been the subject of controversy for his political activism. In November 2014, it was announced that Israel had indefinitely banned Gilbert from entering Gaza, officially for "security reasons"; according to Israeli intelligence sources, it was because there allegedly had been revealed close ties between Gilbert and leaders of Hamas. The decision sparked outrage and the Norwegian government subsequently requested that the decision be reversed. The Israeli Foreign Ministry later clarified that the ban regarded setting foot in Israel, not Gaza. Israel, Haaretz wrote, is the only available transit point for entering the Gaza Strip when the Rafah border from Egypt is closed.

Citing 'security reasons', Israel reportedly imposed a lifetime ban on Gilbert, who has treated casualties in Shifa hospital for 30 years, from entering Israel and from this reason entering the Gaza Strip from the Israeli border after the publication of an open letter in The Lancet, undersigned by 24 doctors and scientists including Gilbert, in which it was argued that Israel was adopting the rhetoric of a national emergency to masquerade a massacre of Palestinians, especially targeting women and children during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict. Later on The Lancet editor in chief Richard Horton said he regretted publishing the letter.

Gilbert has a broad range of experience from international humanitarian work, especially in locations where medical and political issues merge. Since the 1970s, he has been actively involved with solidarity work concerning Palestinians, and he has served as a doctor for several periods in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon for NORWAC. His efforts have been central to leading the city of Tromsø, since 2001 a twin town of Gaza, to claim to be the city that has sent more health workers to the Palestinian territories than any other in the world. His book on the Gaza War, Eyes on Gaza (2009), has been translated into several languages. Gilbert has been lauded as a "hero" in Norwegian media for his work in Gaza; his humanitarian work has been hailed by Prime Ministers Kåre Willoch, Jens Stoltenberg and Erna Solberg, and Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. On 6 May 2013, King Harald V appointed Gilbert as a Commander of the Order of St. Olav for his "wide-ranging services to emergency medicine." He has also done volunteer work at a kibbutz.

On January 8, 2009, while in Gaza, Mads Gilbert was in a video which appeared on CNN which showed the brother of a Palestinian TV producer dying while Gilbert and another doctor worked to save him. This video became subject to controversy and accused that the scene was staged. World News and Features, the camera crew's employer, and the producer himself denounced the allegations. CNN also stated on their web site that they stand by the video. Two weeks later, the CNN published a video report on their website refuting the bloggers' allegations point by point. Two independent doctors who were shown the video said that they had no doubt that the hospital scene and Gilbert's work was genuine.

The doctors were "received as heroes" by the Norwegian public, and received praise from commentators from most of the mainstream political spectrum for their work during the Gaza War. On 11 January 2009, Prime Minister (now NATO Secretary-General) Jens Stoltenberg stated that he had called Gilbert and Fosse to "thank them and recognize the work they have done to alleviate the suffering of the people of Gaza since 31 December last year. They have not only taken on a difficult medical mission, but have also demonstrated great personal courage and compassion. They have been a voice to the world. The Government supports the work of the doctors and their organization. We will continue to support this important work."

Labour Party Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and former conservative Prime Minister Kåre Willoch both wrote endorsements for Gilbert and Fosse's 2009 book Eyes in Gaza; Kåre Willoch wrote that "Israel held journalists away while subjecting the people of Gaza to unfathomable suffering. But two Norwegian doctors were there. Their powerful narration throws a powerful spotlight on a brutality which also damages Israel, and impedes peace."

In 2009 he received the Fritt Ord Honorary Award together with Erik Fosse.

The incident was described by Nordlys editor Hans Kristian Amundsen as "probably the stupidest thing he's ever done", citing it as proof that Gilbert is a "hopeless politician". In an interview with the Norwegian news agency NTB in 2009, Gilbert described his own statements in the aftermath of 9/11 as "unwise and ill-considered", stressing that he is completely against terror against civilians.

During the conflicts in Gaza in 2009 and 2014, Gilbert was accused by some in Norway and abroad of facilitating propaganda by Hamas. His work at the Al-Shifa Hospital has been particularly noted amid allegations of the hospital's use as a Hamas headquarter. According to Israeli intelligence sources, Gilbert was banned from entering Israel because there had been revealed close ties between Gilbert and Hamas-leaders.

Gilbert arrived on emergency assignment for the Norwegian Aid Committee (NORWAC) with the surgeon Erik Fosse to support the humanitarian effort at al-Shifa Hospital during the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict, a period when foreign journalists were barred from entering the Gaza Strip. As international media reported from outside the conflict zone, Gilbert maintained frequent contact with Norwegian media, as well as segments of the world press, including CNN, BBC, ABC and Al Jazeera.

Gilbert criticized and encouraged people to boycott Médecins Sans Frontières in 2006 for not taking a position on conflicts, saying he would "not give a dime" to the annual Norwegian TV-aksjonen, a national collection charity of the state broadcaster NRK.

Previously, in 2001, the leader of the Norwegian branch of Médecins Sans Frontières had sharply criticised Gilbert for voicing support to the September 11 terror attacks, stating that doctors with "such attitudes" could "never become a member of the organisation". On being a doctor as well as a politician, Gilbert has said the two roles are indistinguishable, and that "there is little in medicine that isn't politics".

Following a skiing accident in May 1999, Anna Bågenholm was trapped for more than an hour in icy waters and was pronounced clinically dead, but survived after the resuscitation efforts of Gilbert and his team at the University Hospital of North Norway. Her body temperature was 13.7 °C, which represented the lowest survived body temperature recorded as of 2017. Gilbert was awarded Årets nordlending 2000 ("Northern Norwegian of the year, 2000", by the readership of the Tromsø newspaper Nordlys. Gilbert's breakthrough in treating extreme hypothermia has been chronicled in Cheating death : the doctors and medical miracles that are saving lives against all odds by Sanjay Gupta, as well as being featured in CNN's television program Another Day: Cheating Death. In 2013, Gilbert was made a commander of the Order of St. Olav for his overall contributions to emergency medicine.

He is currently a member of the revolutionary socialist Red Party, and has represented its direct predecessor, the Red Electoral Alliance, the electoral front of the AKP(m-l) in the Troms county council for three terms, from 1979 to 1987 (two terms), and from 1995 to 1999.

Since 1976, he has mainly worked at the anaesthesiology department at the hospital in Tromsø, the current University Hospital of North Norway (UNN). For a while he worked at Gravdal hospital in Lofoten. He did research at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, and received the Dr. Med. doctoral degree at the University of Tromsø in 1991 for a thesis on metabolism and blood circulation during anaesthesia. He became Professor of emergency medicine at the University of Tromsø and head of the emergency medicine department at the University Hospital of North Norway in 1995.

Since 1974, Gilbert lives in Tromsø. He explained that upon first seeing the town, he felt "intensely" that he had come home.

Gilbert's political activism was sparked by the Vietnam War, and he initially became a member of the Solidarity Committee for Vietnam (Solkom). He later joined the Marxist-Leninist SUF(m-l) and the maoist AKP(m-l), and was an active member (the latter party only accepted "active membership") during the 1970s.

Mads Fredrik Gilbert (born 2 June 1947) is a Norwegian physician, humanitarian, activist, and politician for the Red Party. He is a specialist in anesthesiology and head of the emergency medicine department at the University Hospital of North Norway and Professor of emergency medicine at the University of Tromsø.

Gilbert was born 2 June 1947 in Porsgrunn, Telemark, to a family of French Huguenot ancestry. His father Mads Fredrik Gilbert was an electrician, while his mother was a nurse. His family soon relocated to his grandmothers one bedroom apartment in Oslo and he grew up in the borough of Majorstua until the age of 10 and later in Lambertseter. In the mid 1960s he enrolled in the Oslo Cathedral School. After finishing high school, he briefly studied veterinary medicine, however he switched to general medicine following an accident involving his younger brother. He graduated from the University of Oslo in 1973.