Graphic from Tundra Tabloids
NRK journalist Øyvor Bakke hosts the program ”Middagselskapet” (The Dinner Party), where the guest is invited to present three people he or she would have liked to invite to a dinner party. On April 9th the guest of the evening was Mads Gilbert, a maoist physician who became famous when he covered the 2008/2009 war between Hamas and Israel from the safe spot of Shifa hospital, where Gilbert served as a NORWAC doctor and which Hamas fighters used as a base. See the clip on NRK.
Mr.Gilbert’s imaginary guests turned out to be Charlie Chaplin, Author of “The elegance of the Hedgehog” Muriel Barbery and Abu Jihad, who masterminded the worst terrorist act in Israel’s history in which 37 civilians were murdered in a bus hijacking led by Dalal Mughrabi in 1978. Program host Øyvor Bakke does not bat an eyelid at Gilbert’s dream-cast of guests, but introduces Abu Jihad to her audience with the words: “Next man out is what must say is… a powerful man…”
The following then ensues:
(Footage begins: NRK news, April 1988, on the burial of Abu Jihad) “Tens of thousands of Palestinians from the refugee camps all over Syria were present when Abu Jihad’s coffin, covered in the Palestinian flag, this morning was driven through the streets of Damascus. When the procession eventually reached the outskirts of the refugee camp Jarmouh (?) the dense crowd carried the coffin by hand the last hundred metres to the funeral grounds which are reserved Palestinian martyrs. Khalil al Wazir was the deputy military leader of the guerilla organization Al Fatah and was responsible for the planning of a series of operations against Israeli targets. PLO spokesmen say he also was responsible for the coordination of the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories which is now taking place.” (Footage ends: NRK news, April 1988, on the burial of Abu Jihad)
Øyvor Bakke: Abu Jihad as he is also known is a powerful political figure…
Mads Gilbert: Yes, and I would love to invite him… and it might as well have been a woman from the Palestinian liberation movement or from one of the other liberation struggles in the third world, against occupation, against colonization. Abu Jihad was a special person in the Palestinian struggle, he was a great teacher, a philosopher, he was an analyst, he was very knowledgeable about language, culture, and so forth, knew the Palestinian history inside out, and many Palestinians still say today that if Abu Jihad had been alive we would have had a different situation. He was liquidated by the Israelis in 1988 in Tripolo. The Israelis call him a terrorist, and that brings us into the interesting discussion, the liberator of one is the terrorist on another. The Palestinians say that the Israelis are the terrorists, while the Israelis say that it is the Palestinians who are the terrorists… and Abu Jihad was liquidated in front of the eyes of his family, and Ehud Barak, who now is the the Defence Minister of Israel, led that operation. They have never acknowledges this but this is what all historians say.
Øyvor Bakke: How.. (indaudible)… him, then? Is it true that you have met with him?
Mads Gilbert: I met Abu Jihad in Lebanon in 1981, while we were there with the first surgical team from the Palestine Committee… it was a significant meeting.
Øyvor Bakke: What was he like?
Mads Gilbert: The silent type, wise, very dignified, very.. in many ways a representative for the arab culture but also for Palestinian pride… a listener, and at the same time an inexhaustible source of knowledge, so I learned a lot from that, it was not a long meeting, a couple of hours, but it was… it stuck, and now this spring I was on one of those lecture-tours in Canada and USA and spoke about Gaza at a series of universities and I met with his son, in Calgary I believe it was, and he was the spitting image of his father.
Øyvor Bakke: (chuckles, then laughs merrily)
Mads Gilbert: And of course he remembered both the murder and the history and that was very powerful. I would have loved to hear Abu Jihad in a conversation with Chaplin and Muriel Burbery, on the situation in the world, on the conditions of humans in the world today.
Øyvor Bakke: And many will believe that they are very different, but there is a red thread here.
Mads Gilbert: There is a red thread here, and it consists of people who choose to see ordinary people, to see justice, to speak about injustice, in a way which makes the rest of us able to take a stance to it. And I think that art and culture are very undervalued as a political force, a political tool, we need more of that. And I believe we must become better at recognizing that also people in need have their own strategies and that it is our job to support the strategies they chose themselves, rather than make choices on their behalf.
Øyvor Bakke: I believe it would have been an eventful dinner, and I just want to say thank you so much for visiting us, and good luck with your work!
This whitewashing of Abu Jihad goes further than anything we have seen before. Yet the tendencies have been there for a long time. The screenshot below is from a 2008 NRK article on Dalan Mughrabi, who acted on Abu Jihad’s orders. About the hijacking of the buss for which she is remembered the article offers only the following details: The buss was stopped by the Israeli army and a gunfight ensued. The result was dramatic: 37 people were killed and 70 were injured. Dalal and eight others from the PLO were killed. Yet at least in this article the fact that innocent people were killed is at least suggested, if not directly acknowledged. Mads Gilbert made no such concessions during his visit to NRK’s “Middagsselskapet”.
And Øyvor Bakke did not request any.
[...] admin wrote an interesting post today. Here’s a quick excerptMr.Gilbert’s guests turned out to be Charlie Chaplin, Author of “The elegance of the Hedgehog” Muriel Barbery and Abu Jihad, who masterminded the worst terrorist act in Israel’s history in which 37 civilians were murdered in a bus … [...]