But you really can't believe anything he says, given this interview about his seemingly eventful life.
The newspaper seems to have a template of generic summer questions to ask everyday people, like what they are planning to do on vacation or their favorite summer song.
In this case, they asked Eric "Do you have a special summer memory to share with our readers?"
He answered:
I worked as a doctor at the ER at the largest Arab hospital in the West Bank last year. It was an exchange tour with IFMSA , a student organization for medical students. The plan was to stay there for four weeks, but the war broke out while I was down there, and our stay was prolonged into nine weeks. It was, as I said, war, and there was not a single day where I did not cry. I was afraid. I remember we received a busload with Palestinian bomb victims from Gaza. We were wading in blood. One day we had to hide from Israeli soldiers who stormed the hospital to kill our patients. I have experienced children dying in my arms. The worst experience, however, was an episode on the bus. I had to go by bus an hour and half to go to where I lived. Israeli soldiers stopped one time the bus. They stormed the bus and started brutalizing innocents aboard the bus. Me they didn’t touch. I've never felt so helpless in my entire life. I just sat there knowing I could not do anything. While I had to experience a lot of cruelty, it was a great experience. I’ve never learned as much as I did there
This is complete and utter bullshit. But in Norway, this is accepted as how Israelis act.
Several hundred Gazans managed to get out of Gaza for medical care, and some of them went to the West Bank - but in ambulances, not buses. The ones in the worst shape were treated on the scene at an Israeli field hospital. There were no bus filled with of bombing victims.
No one was "wading in blood" unless Palestinian doctors cut some arteries.
The idea that Israeli soldiers stormed West Bank hospitals to kill patients is nothing but a wet dream of Israel haters. So is the idea of IDF soldiers brutalizing everyone on a bus except one Norwegian eyewitness.
A journalist in Norway who wrote about this, Lars-Toralf Storstrand, contacted Haland but Haland refused to answer any questions..
I wonder why.
(h/t Lars-Toralf Storstrand)