al-Jazeera reports:
Israel has admitted that it harvested organs from the dead bodies of Palestinians and Israelis in the 1990s, without permission from their families.
The admission follows the release of an interview with Jehuda Hiss, the former head of Israel's forensic institute, in which he said that workers at the institute had harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers.
In the interview, which was conducted in 2000 when Hiss was head of Tel Aviv's Abu Kabir forensic institute, he said: "We started to harvest corneas ... Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family."
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who conducted the interview, told Al Jazeera on Monday that Hiss had said the "body parts were used by hospitals for transplant purposes - cornea transplants. They were sent to public hospitals [for use on citizens].
Guidelines 'not clear'
"And the skin went to a special skin bank, founded by the military, for their uses", such as for burns victims.
The practice is said to have ended in 2000.
The interview was also reported on Israel's Channel 2 television, which quoted an Israeli military statement that said: "This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer."
Israel's health ministry said in the Channel 2 report that at the time the guidelines for transplants "were not clear" and that for the last 10 years "Abu Kabir has been working according to ethics and Jewish law".
Scheper-Hughes, who is a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, said that she made the interview public because of the controversy last summer over allegations of organ harvesting made by a Swedish newspaper.
In August the Aftonbladet newspaper ran an article alleging that the Israeli army had stolen body organs from Palestinian men after killing them.
Israel denied the claims, calling them anti-Semitic, and the incident raised tensions when Sweden refused to apologise for the article, saying that press freedom prevented it from intervening.
'Conflict deaths'
Donald Bostrom, the journalist who broke the story in Aftonbladet, told Al Jazeera: "UN staff came to me and said that you have to look into this very serious issue. Palestinian young people were disappearing in the areas and five days later they appear back in the villages with an autopsy done on them against the will of the families.
"We need to know who are the victims. Mothers need to know what happened to their sons."
Bostrom said that there is no proof that people were killed for their organs but that an investigation is needed to find out whether there was a policy in place or if the bodies used were random.
Bostrom added that Hiss is the "main key" to solving such unanswered questions, but that there would also be other people involved who could help uncover the truth.
Scheper-Hughes said that some of the dead Palestinians from whom organs were harvested were killed during military raids.
"Some of the bodies were definitely Palestinians who were killed in conflicts," she told Al Jazeera.
"Their organs were taken without consent of families and were used to serve the needs of the country in terms of hospitals as well as the army's needs."
'Technically illegal'
She said that Hiss told her "that the people who did the harvesting were sent by the military. They were often medical students".
"He did it informally and without permission, and it was technically illegal," she said.
The military establishment gave their "sanction and approval" to the procedures, according to Scheper-Hughes.
During his interview with Scheper-Hughes, Hiss said that the eyelids of bodies were glued shut to prevent the removal of corneas being found out.
Hiss was dismissed as head of Abu Kabir in 2004 over irregularities in the use of organs, but charges against him were eventually dropped. He still holds the position of chief pathologist at the institute.
Showing posts with label Israeli body snatchers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israeli body snatchers. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009
Israel's illicit organ trade back under spotlight following Swedish journalist's report.
Middle-East online reports:
Two Israelis have been arrested for running an illegal human organ transplant ring, police said Thursday.
The two men were accused of mediating between people willing to sell organs and those awaiting transplants, and of arranging to have the operations done abroad, police superintendent Gilad Bahat told public radio.
Two other people have been detained on suspicion they were trying to sell kidneys, he said.
Any trade in organs or payment for donations is illegal in Israel.
Illicit organ trade has become a sensitive subject in Israel since a Swedish journalist alleged in August that Israel was stealing organs from killed Palestinians, a charge Israel vehemently denied.
Bahat said the two main suspects placed advertisements in newspapers to attract people willing to sell organs.
"We are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars for each incident, with the seller getting tens of thousands of dollars and the rest going to the agents and to cover medical costs," Bahat said.
Police believe 10 operations organised by the suspects were carried out in South America and China.
Two Israelis have been arrested for running an illegal human organ transplant ring, police said Thursday.
The two men were accused of mediating between people willing to sell organs and those awaiting transplants, and of arranging to have the operations done abroad, police superintendent Gilad Bahat told public radio.
Two other people have been detained on suspicion they were trying to sell kidneys, he said.
Any trade in organs or payment for donations is illegal in Israel.
Illicit organ trade has become a sensitive subject in Israel since a Swedish journalist alleged in August that Israel was stealing organs from killed Palestinians, a charge Israel vehemently denied.
Bahat said the two main suspects placed advertisements in newspapers to attract people willing to sell organs.
"We are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars for each incident, with the seller getting tens of thousands of dollars and the rest going to the agents and to cover medical costs," Bahat said.
Police believe 10 operations organised by the suspects were carried out in South America and China.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
New York police arrest Jewish gang trafficking organs of Algerian children
Watan reports:
An Algerian official revealed Sunday the New York city police were able to catch a Jewish gang involved in the abduction of children from Algeria and trafficking of their organs headed by Levy Rosenbaum.
Rosenbaum was directly involved in the recent case of trading human organs which raised a storm of reactions in the US and Israel.
Dr. Mustafa Khayatti, the head of the Algerian national committee for the development of health and research, said that the arrest of the gang came after Interpol investigations showed that Algerian children were abducted from cities in western Algeria and taken to Morocco in order to harvest their kidneys and traffic them in Israel and the US for $20,000 and $100,000 dollars each.
“The arrest of Jewish organ trafficking gangs does not mean that the danger has gone, top officials and specialists in this issue assert that there are other Jewish gangs who remain active in several Arab countries,” Dr. Khayatti noted.
US authorities had arrested 44 people including Rabbis and mayors in New Jersey last July; they all were prosecuted for money laundering activities and sale of human organs.
Last month, a report issued by Aftonbladet, a newspaper Swedish, accused Israeli soldiers of kidnapping Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip to kill them and steal their organs, indicating a possible link between these crimes and the mafia of human organs detected in the US.
In another related context, the humanitarian relief committee affiliated with the union of Egyptian doctors declared Monday its intention to organize an international and Arab media campaign to expose the Israeli crimes of stealing organs from Palestinians.
The committee called in a statement for opening an investigation into these crimes, stressing that a number of Israeli surgeons are involved in harvesting human organs of Palestinians.
Dr. Abdelkader Hegazy, the head of the committee, said that the union of Egyptian doctors received a letter from the Jordanian union about the ways of cooperation in prosecuting every Israeli involved in committing such crimes.
An Algerian official revealed Sunday the New York city police were able to catch a Jewish gang involved in the abduction of children from Algeria and trafficking of their organs headed by Levy Rosenbaum.
Rosenbaum was directly involved in the recent case of trading human organs which raised a storm of reactions in the US and Israel.
Dr. Mustafa Khayatti, the head of the Algerian national committee for the development of health and research, said that the arrest of the gang came after Interpol investigations showed that Algerian children were abducted from cities in western Algeria and taken to Morocco in order to harvest their kidneys and traffic them in Israel and the US for $20,000 and $100,000 dollars each.
“The arrest of Jewish organ trafficking gangs does not mean that the danger has gone, top officials and specialists in this issue assert that there are other Jewish gangs who remain active in several Arab countries,” Dr. Khayatti noted.
US authorities had arrested 44 people including Rabbis and mayors in New Jersey last July; they all were prosecuted for money laundering activities and sale of human organs.
Last month, a report issued by Aftonbladet, a newspaper Swedish, accused Israeli soldiers of kidnapping Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip to kill them and steal their organs, indicating a possible link between these crimes and the mafia of human organs detected in the US.
In another related context, the humanitarian relief committee affiliated with the union of Egyptian doctors declared Monday its intention to organize an international and Arab media campaign to expose the Israeli crimes of stealing organs from Palestinians.
The committee called in a statement for opening an investigation into these crimes, stressing that a number of Israeli surgeons are involved in harvesting human organs of Palestinians.
Dr. Abdelkader Hegazy, the head of the committee, said that the union of Egyptian doctors received a letter from the Jordanian union about the ways of cooperation in prosecuting every Israeli involved in committing such crimes.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
The Missing Link In Palestinian Organ Theft?
By Jonathan Cook for Information Clearing House
Nazareth: The hyperventilating by Israel’s leaders [1] over a story published in a Swedish newspaper last month [2] suggesting that the Israeli army assisted in organ theft from Palestinians has distracted attention from the disturbing allegations made by Palestinian families that were the basis of the article’s central claim.
The families’ fears that relatives, killed by the Israeli army, had body parts removed during unauthorised autopsies performed in Israel have been overshadowed by accusations of a “blood libel” directed against the reporter, Donald Bostrom, and the Aftonbladet newspaper, as well as the Swedish government and people.
I have no idea whether the story is true. Like most journalists working in Israel and Palestine, I have heard such rumours before. Until Bostrom wrote his piece, no Western journalist, as far as I know, had investigated them. After so many years, the assumption by journalists was that there was little hope of finding evidence -- apart from literally by digging up the corpses. Doubtless, the inevitable charge of anti-semitism such reports attract acted as a powerful deterrent too.
What is striking about this episode is that the families making the claims were not given a hearing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the first intifada, when most of the reports occurred, and are still being denied the right to voice their concerns today.
Israel’s sensitivity to the allegation of organ theft -- or “harvesting”, as many observers coyly refer to the practice -- appears to trump the genuine concerns of the families about possible abuse of their loved ones.
Bostrom has been much criticised for the flimsy evidence he produced in support of his inflammatory story. Certainly there is much to criticise in his and the newspaper’s presentation of the report.
Most significantly, Bostrom and Aftonbladet exposed themselves to the charge of anti-semitism -- at least from Israeli officials keen to make mischief -- through a major error of judgment.
They muddied the waters by trying to make a tenuous connection between the Palestinian families’ allegations about organ theft during unauthorised autopsies and the entirely separate revelations this month that a group of US Jews had been arrested for money-laundering and trading in body parts. [3]
In making that connection, Bostrom and Aftonbladet suggested that the problem of organ theft is a current one when they have produced only examples of such concern from the early 1990s. They also implied, whether intentionally or not, that abuses allegedly committed by the Israeli army could somehow be extrapolated more generally to Jews.
The Swedish reporter should instead have concentrated on the valid question raised by the families about why the Israeli army, by its own admission, took away the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed by its soldiers, allowed autopsies to be performed on them without the families’ permission and then returned the bodies for burial in ceremonies held under tight security.
Bostrom’s article highlighted the case of one Palestinian, 19-year-old Bilal Ahmed Ghanan, from the village of Imatin in the northern West Bank, who was killed in 1992. A shocking picture of Bilal’s stitched-up body accompanied the report. [4]
Bostrom has told the Israeli media that he knows of at least 20 cases of families claiming that the bodies of loved ones were returned with body parts missing, [5] although he did not say whether any of these alleged incidents occurred more recently.
In 1992, the year in question, Bostrom says, the Israeli army admitted to him that it took away for autopsy 69 of the 133 Palestinians who died of unnatural causes. The army has not denied this part of his report.
A justifiable question from the families relayed by Bostrom is: why did the army want the autopsies carried out? Unless it can be shown that the army intended to conduct investigations into the deaths -- and there is apparently no suggestion that it did -- the autopsies were unnecessary.
In fact, they were more than unnecessary. They were counterproductive if we assume that the army has no interest in gathering evidence that could be used in future war crimes prosecutions of its soldiers. Israel has a long track record of stymying investigations into Palestinian deaths at the hands of its soldiers, and carried on that ignoble tradition in the wake of its recent assault on Gaza.
Of even greater concern for the Palestinian families is the fact that at around the time the bodies of their loved ones were whisked off by the army for autopsy, the only institute in Israel that conducts such autopsies, Abu Kabir, near Tel Aviv, was almost certainly at the centre of a trade in organs that later became a scandal inside Israel.
Equally disturbing, the doctor behind the plunder of body parts, Prof Yehuda Hiss, appointed director of the Abu Kabir institute in the late 1980s, has never been jailed despite admitting to the organ theft and he continues to be the state’s chief pathologist at the institute.
Hiss was in charge of the autopsies of Palestinians when Bostrom was listening to the families’ claims in 1992. Hiss was subsequently investigated twice, in 2002 and 2005, over the theft of body parts on a large scale.
Allegations of Hiss’ illegal trade in organs was first revealed in 2000 by investigative reporters at the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, which reported that he had “price listings” for body parts and that he sold mainly to Israeli universities and medical schools. [6]
Apparently undeterred by these revelations, Hiss still had an array of body parts in his possession at Abu Kabir when the Israeli courts ordered a search in 2002. Israel National News reported at the time: “Over the past years, heads of the institute appear to have given thousands of organs for research without permission, while maintaining a ‘storehouse’ of organs at Abu Kabir.” [7]
Hiss did not deny the plunder of organs, admitting that the body parts belonged to soldiers killed in action and had been passed to medical institutes and hospitals in the interests of advancing research. Understandably, however, the Palestinian families are unlikely to be satisfied with Hiss’ explanation. If the wishes of a soldier’s familiy were disregarded by Hiss, why not Palestinian families’ wishes too?
Hiss was allowed to continue as director of Abu Kabir until 2005 when allegations of a trade in organs surfaced again. On this occasion Hiss admitted to having removed parts from 125 bodies without authorisation. Following a plea bargain with the state, the attorney general decided not to press criminal charges and Hiss was given only a reprimand. [8] He has continued as chief pathologist at Abu Kabir.
It should also be noted, as Bostrom points out, that in the early 1990s Israel was suffering from an acute shortage of organ donors to the extent that Ehud Olmert, health minister at the time, launched a public campaign to encourage Israelis to come forward.
This offers a possible explanation for Hiss’ actions. He may have acted to help make up the shortfall.
Given the facts that are known, there must be at least a very strong suspicion that Hiss removed organs without authorisation from some Palestinians he autopsied. Both this issue, and the army’s possible role in supplying him with corpses, needs investigation.
Hiss is also implicated in another long-running and unresolved scandal from Israel’s early years, in the 1950s, when the children of recent Jewish immigrants to Israel from Yemen were adopted by Ashkenazi couples after the Yeminite parents had been told that their child had died, [9] usually after admission to hospital.
After an initial cover-up, the Yeminite parents have continued pressing for answers from the state, and forced officials to reopen the files. [8] The Palestinian families deserve no less.
However, unlike the Yemenite parents, their chances of receiving any kind of investigation, transparent or otherwise, look all but hopeless.
When Palestinian demands for justice are not backed by investigations from journalists or the protests of the international community, Israel can safely ignore them.
It is worth remembering in this context the constant refrain from Israel’s peace camp that the brutal, four-decade occupation of the Palestinians has profoundly corrupted Israeli society.
When the army enjoys power without accountability, how do Palestinians, or we, know what soldiers are allowed to get away with under cover of occupation? What restraints are in place to prevent abuses? And who takes them to task if they do commit crimes?
Similarly, when Israeli politicians are able to cry “blood libel” or “anti-semitism” when they are criticised, damaging the reputations of those they accuse, what incentive do they have to initiate inquiries that may harm them or the institutions they oversee? What reason do they have to be honest when they can bludgeon a critic into silence, at no cost to themselves?
This is the meaning of the phrase “Power corrupts”, and Israeli politicians and soldiers, as well as at least one pathologist, demonstrably have far too much power -- most especially over Palestinians under occupation.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website iswww.jkcook.net.
Notes
[1] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1109437.html
[2] http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=8390&lg=en
[3] http://www.slate.com/id/2223559/
[4] http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab
[5] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3766093,00.html
[6] http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1173179
[7] http://www.israelfaxx.com/webarchive/2002/01/2fax0104.html
[8] http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/90518
[9] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/israel-seeks-lost-children-of-yemen-exodus-1318037.html
-------
Note: For more information on this topic please check out the following stories:
http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/08/30/gilad-atzmon-organ-donation-and-theft-in-contemporary-jewish-folklore/
http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/09/06/kawther-salam-palestinian-organs-for-sale-and-experiments/
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=126089&d=4&m=9&y=2009
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-2086-Foreign-Policy-Examiner~y2009m8d29-Egypt-reports-on-allegations-of-Israels-organ-harvesting#
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=105140§ionid=351020202
http://alisonweir.org/journal/2009/9/1/israeli-organ-harvesting.html
http://www.geocities.com/organdonate/organsellingorgantheft.html
http://www.israelfaxx.com/webarchive/2003/07/3fax0730.html
http://rainbowwarrior2005.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/butchers-the-hidden-truth-about-israels-kidney-theft-ring/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZxyD931dEQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjKh7G8fH1U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eipil73cA2k
Many thanks to B. for almost all of these link!
Nazareth: The hyperventilating by Israel’s leaders [1] over a story published in a Swedish newspaper last month [2] suggesting that the Israeli army assisted in organ theft from Palestinians has distracted attention from the disturbing allegations made by Palestinian families that were the basis of the article’s central claim.
The families’ fears that relatives, killed by the Israeli army, had body parts removed during unauthorised autopsies performed in Israel have been overshadowed by accusations of a “blood libel” directed against the reporter, Donald Bostrom, and the Aftonbladet newspaper, as well as the Swedish government and people.
I have no idea whether the story is true. Like most journalists working in Israel and Palestine, I have heard such rumours before. Until Bostrom wrote his piece, no Western journalist, as far as I know, had investigated them. After so many years, the assumption by journalists was that there was little hope of finding evidence -- apart from literally by digging up the corpses. Doubtless, the inevitable charge of anti-semitism such reports attract acted as a powerful deterrent too.
What is striking about this episode is that the families making the claims were not given a hearing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the first intifada, when most of the reports occurred, and are still being denied the right to voice their concerns today.
Israel’s sensitivity to the allegation of organ theft -- or “harvesting”, as many observers coyly refer to the practice -- appears to trump the genuine concerns of the families about possible abuse of their loved ones.
Bostrom has been much criticised for the flimsy evidence he produced in support of his inflammatory story. Certainly there is much to criticise in his and the newspaper’s presentation of the report.
Most significantly, Bostrom and Aftonbladet exposed themselves to the charge of anti-semitism -- at least from Israeli officials keen to make mischief -- through a major error of judgment.
They muddied the waters by trying to make a tenuous connection between the Palestinian families’ allegations about organ theft during unauthorised autopsies and the entirely separate revelations this month that a group of US Jews had been arrested for money-laundering and trading in body parts. [3]
In making that connection, Bostrom and Aftonbladet suggested that the problem of organ theft is a current one when they have produced only examples of such concern from the early 1990s. They also implied, whether intentionally or not, that abuses allegedly committed by the Israeli army could somehow be extrapolated more generally to Jews.
The Swedish reporter should instead have concentrated on the valid question raised by the families about why the Israeli army, by its own admission, took away the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed by its soldiers, allowed autopsies to be performed on them without the families’ permission and then returned the bodies for burial in ceremonies held under tight security.
Bostrom’s article highlighted the case of one Palestinian, 19-year-old Bilal Ahmed Ghanan, from the village of Imatin in the northern West Bank, who was killed in 1992. A shocking picture of Bilal’s stitched-up body accompanied the report. [4]
Bostrom has told the Israeli media that he knows of at least 20 cases of families claiming that the bodies of loved ones were returned with body parts missing, [5] although he did not say whether any of these alleged incidents occurred more recently.
In 1992, the year in question, Bostrom says, the Israeli army admitted to him that it took away for autopsy 69 of the 133 Palestinians who died of unnatural causes. The army has not denied this part of his report.
A justifiable question from the families relayed by Bostrom is: why did the army want the autopsies carried out? Unless it can be shown that the army intended to conduct investigations into the deaths -- and there is apparently no suggestion that it did -- the autopsies were unnecessary.
In fact, they were more than unnecessary. They were counterproductive if we assume that the army has no interest in gathering evidence that could be used in future war crimes prosecutions of its soldiers. Israel has a long track record of stymying investigations into Palestinian deaths at the hands of its soldiers, and carried on that ignoble tradition in the wake of its recent assault on Gaza.
Of even greater concern for the Palestinian families is the fact that at around the time the bodies of their loved ones were whisked off by the army for autopsy, the only institute in Israel that conducts such autopsies, Abu Kabir, near Tel Aviv, was almost certainly at the centre of a trade in organs that later became a scandal inside Israel.
Equally disturbing, the doctor behind the plunder of body parts, Prof Yehuda Hiss, appointed director of the Abu Kabir institute in the late 1980s, has never been jailed despite admitting to the organ theft and he continues to be the state’s chief pathologist at the institute.
Hiss was in charge of the autopsies of Palestinians when Bostrom was listening to the families’ claims in 1992. Hiss was subsequently investigated twice, in 2002 and 2005, over the theft of body parts on a large scale.
Allegations of Hiss’ illegal trade in organs was first revealed in 2000 by investigative reporters at the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, which reported that he had “price listings” for body parts and that he sold mainly to Israeli universities and medical schools. [6]
Apparently undeterred by these revelations, Hiss still had an array of body parts in his possession at Abu Kabir when the Israeli courts ordered a search in 2002. Israel National News reported at the time: “Over the past years, heads of the institute appear to have given thousands of organs for research without permission, while maintaining a ‘storehouse’ of organs at Abu Kabir.” [7]
Hiss did not deny the plunder of organs, admitting that the body parts belonged to soldiers killed in action and had been passed to medical institutes and hospitals in the interests of advancing research. Understandably, however, the Palestinian families are unlikely to be satisfied with Hiss’ explanation. If the wishes of a soldier’s familiy were disregarded by Hiss, why not Palestinian families’ wishes too?
Hiss was allowed to continue as director of Abu Kabir until 2005 when allegations of a trade in organs surfaced again. On this occasion Hiss admitted to having removed parts from 125 bodies without authorisation. Following a plea bargain with the state, the attorney general decided not to press criminal charges and Hiss was given only a reprimand. [8] He has continued as chief pathologist at Abu Kabir.
It should also be noted, as Bostrom points out, that in the early 1990s Israel was suffering from an acute shortage of organ donors to the extent that Ehud Olmert, health minister at the time, launched a public campaign to encourage Israelis to come forward.
This offers a possible explanation for Hiss’ actions. He may have acted to help make up the shortfall.
Given the facts that are known, there must be at least a very strong suspicion that Hiss removed organs without authorisation from some Palestinians he autopsied. Both this issue, and the army’s possible role in supplying him with corpses, needs investigation.
Hiss is also implicated in another long-running and unresolved scandal from Israel’s early years, in the 1950s, when the children of recent Jewish immigrants to Israel from Yemen were adopted by Ashkenazi couples after the Yeminite parents had been told that their child had died, [9] usually after admission to hospital.
After an initial cover-up, the Yeminite parents have continued pressing for answers from the state, and forced officials to reopen the files. [8] The Palestinian families deserve no less.
However, unlike the Yemenite parents, their chances of receiving any kind of investigation, transparent or otherwise, look all but hopeless.
When Palestinian demands for justice are not backed by investigations from journalists or the protests of the international community, Israel can safely ignore them.
It is worth remembering in this context the constant refrain from Israel’s peace camp that the brutal, four-decade occupation of the Palestinians has profoundly corrupted Israeli society.
When the army enjoys power without accountability, how do Palestinians, or we, know what soldiers are allowed to get away with under cover of occupation? What restraints are in place to prevent abuses? And who takes them to task if they do commit crimes?
Similarly, when Israeli politicians are able to cry “blood libel” or “anti-semitism” when they are criticised, damaging the reputations of those they accuse, what incentive do they have to initiate inquiries that may harm them or the institutions they oversee? What reason do they have to be honest when they can bludgeon a critic into silence, at no cost to themselves?
This is the meaning of the phrase “Power corrupts”, and Israeli politicians and soldiers, as well as at least one pathologist, demonstrably have far too much power -- most especially over Palestinians under occupation.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website iswww.jkcook.net.
Notes
[1] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1109437.html
[2] http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=8390&lg=en
[3] http://www.slate.com/id/2223559/
[4] http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab
[5] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3766093,00.html
[6] http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1173179
[7] http://www.israelfaxx.com/webarchive/2002/01/2fax0104.html
[8] http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/90518
[9] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/israel-seeks-lost-children-of-yemen-exodus-1318037.html
-------
Note: For more information on this topic please check out the following stories:
http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/08/30/gilad-atzmon-organ-donation-and-theft-in-contemporary-jewish-folklore/
http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/09/06/kawther-salam-palestinian-organs-for-sale-and-experiments/
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=126089&d=4&m=9&y=2009
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-2086-Foreign-Policy-Examiner~y2009m8d29-Egypt-reports-on-allegations-of-Israels-organ-harvesting#
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=105140§ionid=351020202
http://alisonweir.org/journal/2009/9/1/israeli-organ-harvesting.html
http://www.geocities.com/organdonate/organsellingorgantheft.html
http://www.israelfaxx.com/webarchive/2003/07/3fax0730.html
http://rainbowwarrior2005.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/butchers-the-hidden-truth-about-israels-kidney-theft-ring/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZxyD931dEQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjKh7G8fH1U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eipil73cA2k
Many thanks to B. for almost all of these link!
Monday, August 24, 2009
Baseless organ theft accusations will not bring Israel to justice
by Matthew Cassel for The Electronic Intifada
On Friday I was invited to appear on Press TV (Iran's international English-language satellite channel) alongside Donald Bostrom, a Swedish journalist who authored the recent article about the Israeli army stealing the organs of young Palestinian men it had killed in 1992 during the first Palestinian intifada. I surprised the producers at Press TV who I don't think invited me to argue the article's legitimacy, but instead reaffirm its claims.
After the show, a producer in Tehran thanked me and told me that it was nice to get someone from the "other side." But I had to make it clear, that I was not from the "other side" as she meant it. I support uncovering human rights violations and war crimes wherever they occur, especially in Palestine, where I have worked for many years. I do believe Bostrom's intentions were to do much the same but that his process was highly irresponsible. The problem is not that he is accusing the State of Israel of wrongdoing, but that he is making accusations of what would amount to extremely serious war crimes while providing absolutely no evidence to support his claims. Rather than advancing the cause of Palestinian human rights, such behavior hurts the many organizations, journalists, activists and others working tirelessly to expose and document Israel's numerous violations of international law committed against Palestinians and people of other Arab nations in recent decades.
Bostrom's article lacks credibility for a number of reasons. In the opening paragraph he tells the story of Levy Rosenbaum, a Jewish man in New York linked to illegal trafficking in human organs with counterparts in Israel. While Rosenbaum has admitted to buying organs from destitute Israelis, until now there has been nothing outside Bostrom's article to suggest that this trade involved the organs of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army.
Rosenbaum has also admitted to being involved in the trade for the past ten years which is well after 1992, when Bostrom claims the organ theft may have occurred in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Other than Israel being involved, there is no evidence to make a direct link between these incidents. It is poor journalism on Bostrom's part to use a timely event and try to connect it to something that happened nearly two decades earlier without offering any evidence.
Bostrom also refers to Palestinians disappearing for days at a time and who have in many cases returned dead. This is known to have occurred before, especially Palestinians being arrested and taken to detention centers without the Israeli authorities bothering to inform the families. This is something that has been reported on and documented by numerous Palestinian human rights organizations. Israel may have even performed autopsies on the bodies without the families' consent, as Bostrom reports. He publishes a horrific photograph of one of these bodies alongside the article, but again, this is not proof that organs in that person's body were removed and sold, or given to Israelis in need, as the author implies.
One must also ask why this story was not covered in 1992, when Bostrom claims the organ theft occurred. It seems this would be a more appropriate time to expose such a story when bodies of those killed by Israel could have been autopsied to determine for a fact whether or not organs from those Palestinians killed by Israel were in fact removed. In the Press TV interview, Bostrom claimed that he did approach many Palestinian, Israeli and international organizations but none, minus the UN, heeded his call for further investigation. Yet, he only makes brief mention of this in the article and says the UN staff was prevented from doing anything about his findings.
Unlike Bostrom's reporting, when most Palestinian human rights organizations or other journalists have uncovered Israeli violations, they are sure to provide well-documented evidence to prove beyond a doubt that such violations were in fact committed. Even though Israel has made it very difficult for both Palestinian and international journalists and human rights workers to practice inside the West Bank and Gaza Strip, many have risked their lives to see that evidence of Israel's crimes is uncovered and reported.
Many such well-documented violations committed over recent decades include: willful killing of civilians, including children; torture; extrajudicial executions; depriving a civilian population of food and other necessities; blackmailing patients in need of medical care to try to turn them into informers; wanton and deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure; punitive home demolitions; and illegal use of restricted weapons against civilian targets, including white phosphorus and cluster bombs. The list of UN resolutions and international treaties violated by Israel is far too long to list here, although these violations have been carefully documented over many years by human rights organizations that have worked tirelessly for their enforcement.
I am not trying to argue here that Israel or some Israelis could never have trafficked stolen Palestinian organs. In a place like Palestine, however, where evidence of Israeli war crimes has never been difficult to find -- despite Israel's consistent efforts to block investigations -- those concerned with holding Israel accountable should not level allegations of such seriousness without producing some evidence.
Following Israel's winter invasion of Gaza -- during which more than 1,500 Palestinians were killed, the vast majority civilians -- several well-known international human rights groups issued reports containing irrefutable evidence of shocking crimes. Israeli soldiers who participated in the attack on Gaza have been quoted in the Israeli press talking about how they or their colleagues committed atrocities, such as shooting dead unarmed civilians, including children.
The fact that Bostrom did not offer evidence for his organ theft claims has given Israel an enormous propaganda gift. Because he offered nothing more than conjecture and hearsay, Israel has launched a major campaign casting itself as an aggrieved victim of "blood libel." This allows Israel to distract attention from the mountains of evidence of well-documented war crimes, and even to discredit real evidence. If there is no evidence behind the organ theft claims, Israel can argue, then maybe all these other claims about crimes in Gaza are equally dubious.
Predictably, Israel and its supporters launched a ridiculous campaign not only targeting Bostrom and his newspaper, but against all of Sweden and its population of more than nine million. Some have started an online petition calling for the boycott the furniture retailer IKEA, founded in Sweden, while the Israeli interior ministry claims it will freeze the entry visas for Swedish journalists. Furthermore, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is demanding that the Swedish government declare its "condemnation" of the article. This is a strategy that Israel could not use in response to the Gaza war crimes reports. With each violation clearly documented and coming from a wide range of credible sources and testimonies, Israel could not demand that governments condemn the human rights groups and publications that disseminated them. Israel predictably objected to the reports issued about Gaza, but tried to bring as little attention to them as possible -- understandably, because the reports are irrefutable.
But Israel has done all it can to draw attention and create an international crisis out of the organ theft allegation. Even the president of the Official Council of Jewish Communities in Sweden has condemned the response, saying that Israel "had blown the issue completely out of proportion." As Israel does with increasingly little discrimination, it has claimed that the article was motivated by "anti-Semitism." So far, Sweden has withstood Israel's hectoring that its government must take a position on an article published in a free press. But given the record of pandering to Israel, it remains to be seen if Sweden will stick to this position. If Sweden does bow down to Israeli pressure, it would set a frightening precedent for journalists whereby Israel can affect a state's policy of freedom for the press.
Israel's tactics of intimidation are not justified by Bostrom's article, which is nothing more than an example of irresponsible journalism and publishing. The editors at the Swedish daily Aftonbladet who published this piece, should've sent it back to the author and told him to investigate the issue further until he found evidence to corroborate his claims. If there is any basis for the organ theft allegations, diligent reporting would bring it out. As Malcolm X said, "Truth is on the side of the oppressed;" all we need is to collect the evidence to prove it.
Matthew Cassel is Assistant Editor of The Electronic Intifada. His blog is http://justimage.wordpress.com.
On Friday I was invited to appear on Press TV (Iran's international English-language satellite channel) alongside Donald Bostrom, a Swedish journalist who authored the recent article about the Israeli army stealing the organs of young Palestinian men it had killed in 1992 during the first Palestinian intifada. I surprised the producers at Press TV who I don't think invited me to argue the article's legitimacy, but instead reaffirm its claims.
After the show, a producer in Tehran thanked me and told me that it was nice to get someone from the "other side." But I had to make it clear, that I was not from the "other side" as she meant it. I support uncovering human rights violations and war crimes wherever they occur, especially in Palestine, where I have worked for many years. I do believe Bostrom's intentions were to do much the same but that his process was highly irresponsible. The problem is not that he is accusing the State of Israel of wrongdoing, but that he is making accusations of what would amount to extremely serious war crimes while providing absolutely no evidence to support his claims. Rather than advancing the cause of Palestinian human rights, such behavior hurts the many organizations, journalists, activists and others working tirelessly to expose and document Israel's numerous violations of international law committed against Palestinians and people of other Arab nations in recent decades.
Bostrom's article lacks credibility for a number of reasons. In the opening paragraph he tells the story of Levy Rosenbaum, a Jewish man in New York linked to illegal trafficking in human organs with counterparts in Israel. While Rosenbaum has admitted to buying organs from destitute Israelis, until now there has been nothing outside Bostrom's article to suggest that this trade involved the organs of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army.
Rosenbaum has also admitted to being involved in the trade for the past ten years which is well after 1992, when Bostrom claims the organ theft may have occurred in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Other than Israel being involved, there is no evidence to make a direct link between these incidents. It is poor journalism on Bostrom's part to use a timely event and try to connect it to something that happened nearly two decades earlier without offering any evidence.
Bostrom also refers to Palestinians disappearing for days at a time and who have in many cases returned dead. This is known to have occurred before, especially Palestinians being arrested and taken to detention centers without the Israeli authorities bothering to inform the families. This is something that has been reported on and documented by numerous Palestinian human rights organizations. Israel may have even performed autopsies on the bodies without the families' consent, as Bostrom reports. He publishes a horrific photograph of one of these bodies alongside the article, but again, this is not proof that organs in that person's body were removed and sold, or given to Israelis in need, as the author implies.
One must also ask why this story was not covered in 1992, when Bostrom claims the organ theft occurred. It seems this would be a more appropriate time to expose such a story when bodies of those killed by Israel could have been autopsied to determine for a fact whether or not organs from those Palestinians killed by Israel were in fact removed. In the Press TV interview, Bostrom claimed that he did approach many Palestinian, Israeli and international organizations but none, minus the UN, heeded his call for further investigation. Yet, he only makes brief mention of this in the article and says the UN staff was prevented from doing anything about his findings.
Unlike Bostrom's reporting, when most Palestinian human rights organizations or other journalists have uncovered Israeli violations, they are sure to provide well-documented evidence to prove beyond a doubt that such violations were in fact committed. Even though Israel has made it very difficult for both Palestinian and international journalists and human rights workers to practice inside the West Bank and Gaza Strip, many have risked their lives to see that evidence of Israel's crimes is uncovered and reported.
Many such well-documented violations committed over recent decades include: willful killing of civilians, including children; torture; extrajudicial executions; depriving a civilian population of food and other necessities; blackmailing patients in need of medical care to try to turn them into informers; wanton and deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure; punitive home demolitions; and illegal use of restricted weapons against civilian targets, including white phosphorus and cluster bombs. The list of UN resolutions and international treaties violated by Israel is far too long to list here, although these violations have been carefully documented over many years by human rights organizations that have worked tirelessly for their enforcement.
I am not trying to argue here that Israel or some Israelis could never have trafficked stolen Palestinian organs. In a place like Palestine, however, where evidence of Israeli war crimes has never been difficult to find -- despite Israel's consistent efforts to block investigations -- those concerned with holding Israel accountable should not level allegations of such seriousness without producing some evidence.
Following Israel's winter invasion of Gaza -- during which more than 1,500 Palestinians were killed, the vast majority civilians -- several well-known international human rights groups issued reports containing irrefutable evidence of shocking crimes. Israeli soldiers who participated in the attack on Gaza have been quoted in the Israeli press talking about how they or their colleagues committed atrocities, such as shooting dead unarmed civilians, including children.
The fact that Bostrom did not offer evidence for his organ theft claims has given Israel an enormous propaganda gift. Because he offered nothing more than conjecture and hearsay, Israel has launched a major campaign casting itself as an aggrieved victim of "blood libel." This allows Israel to distract attention from the mountains of evidence of well-documented war crimes, and even to discredit real evidence. If there is no evidence behind the organ theft claims, Israel can argue, then maybe all these other claims about crimes in Gaza are equally dubious.
Predictably, Israel and its supporters launched a ridiculous campaign not only targeting Bostrom and his newspaper, but against all of Sweden and its population of more than nine million. Some have started an online petition calling for the boycott the furniture retailer IKEA, founded in Sweden, while the Israeli interior ministry claims it will freeze the entry visas for Swedish journalists. Furthermore, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is demanding that the Swedish government declare its "condemnation" of the article. This is a strategy that Israel could not use in response to the Gaza war crimes reports. With each violation clearly documented and coming from a wide range of credible sources and testimonies, Israel could not demand that governments condemn the human rights groups and publications that disseminated them. Israel predictably objected to the reports issued about Gaza, but tried to bring as little attention to them as possible -- understandably, because the reports are irrefutable.
But Israel has done all it can to draw attention and create an international crisis out of the organ theft allegation. Even the president of the Official Council of Jewish Communities in Sweden has condemned the response, saying that Israel "had blown the issue completely out of proportion." As Israel does with increasingly little discrimination, it has claimed that the article was motivated by "anti-Semitism." So far, Sweden has withstood Israel's hectoring that its government must take a position on an article published in a free press. But given the record of pandering to Israel, it remains to be seen if Sweden will stick to this position. If Sweden does bow down to Israeli pressure, it would set a frightening precedent for journalists whereby Israel can affect a state's policy of freedom for the press.
Israel's tactics of intimidation are not justified by Bostrom's article, which is nothing more than an example of irresponsible journalism and publishing. The editors at the Swedish daily Aftonbladet who published this piece, should've sent it back to the author and told him to investigate the issue further until he found evidence to corroborate his claims. If there is any basis for the organ theft allegations, diligent reporting would bring it out. As Malcolm X said, "Truth is on the side of the oppressed;" all we need is to collect the evidence to prove it.
Matthew Cassel is Assistant Editor of The Electronic Intifada. His blog is http://justimage.wordpress.com.
¿Israel está detrás del tráfico global de riñones?
(please click here for a rough machine translation into English by Google language)
Alfredo Jalife-Rahme para la Jornada
Desde hace más de una década era sabido en los informados círculos médicos y penales
Alfredo Jalife-Rahme para la Jornada
Desde hace más de una década era sabido en los informados círculos médicos y penales
el financiamiento por Israel de transplantes de órganos en otros paísesde forma clandestina mediante una extensa red criminal, como confesó Geldaya Tauber Gady, alto oficial retirado del ejército israelí, ante un tribunal de Brasil:
el gobierno israelí está enterado del tráfico de órganos para los pacientes de su país y paga por todas las transacciones (sic) a través del plan 4 de salud(BNET; Transplant News; 30/1/04).
Según Larry Rohter, de The New York Times (23/5/04), el israelí Ilan Peri es el cerebro tratante del mercado negro del transplante global de riñones por conducto de la empresa TechCom, con sede en Tel Aviv. Después de haber sido expuestos en Sudáfrica y Brasil, los traficantes israelíes de órganos trasladaron a China gran parte de sus operaciones.
Rohter arguye que la emergencia de Israel como foco del sindicato (criminal de riñones) no causa sorpresa
debido a que por consideraciones religiosas la tasa de donación en Israel (Nota: 8 por ciento) se encuentra entre las más bajas del mundo occidental (Nota: 35 por ciento)
.
Hace dos años, Zaki Shapiro, cirujano israelí y anterior director de transplantes en el Rabin Medical Center de Israel, fue detenido en medio de una balacera en Turquía por estar implicado en una red clandestina de venta de riñones en un hospital privado de Estambul, según The British Medical Journal (12/5/07)
El rotativo israelí Haaretz (12/12/01) había reportado hace casi ocho años que las autoridades de Rumania buscan posibles vínculos entre las agencias de adopción (sic) israelíes y la ilegal conspiración (¡supersic!) global en la venta de órganos para transplantes
. Rumania investiga si los niños rumanos llegaron a Israel con todos los órganos en sus cuerpos
. Las parejas israelíes pagan 20 mil dólares por cada infante rumano adoptado. Se teme que varios papeles de adopción hayan sido falsificados, relata pulcramente Haaretz, que ya había señalado que algunos médicos israelíes estaban implicados en transplantes ilegales de riñones
en Turquía, Rumania y otros países de Europa oriental.
Hechos:
El pasado 23 de julio, en un operativo espectacular en New Jersey, la policía judicial de Estados Unidos detuvo a 44 personas, incluidos cinco rabinos de Brooklyn, por lavado de dinero, tráfico de riñones y fabricación de bolsas falsas de diseño.
El lavado de dinero del eje Nueva York-Tel Aviv (¿incluirá al México neoliberal
?) está ya muy visto, por lo que nos detendremos en el menos conocido tráfico de riñones por los mismos operadores criminales, entre quienes destaca el rabino Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, quien resultó un óptimo financiero al comprar los riñones a los donadores
en el mercado negro por 10 mil dólares para venderlos en 160 mil a los urgidos receptores
(MSNBC; 24/7/09). ¡Qué buen negocio!
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, profesor de antropología de la Universidad de California en Berkeley, había alertado al FBI desde hace siete años sobre la red de tráfico de riñones en el mercado negro de Estados Unidos por el rabino Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, quien llegó a colocar su revólver en la cabeza de los donadores
arrepentidos, en su mayoría oriundos de aldeas pobres de varios países de Europa oriental, en particular de Moldavia (Haaretz; 26/7/09).
En India, la compra de los riñones de los miserables es más barata: 2 mil dólares (Daily News: 27/7/09). ¿Habrá comprado riñones indios el rabino criminal Rosembaum para acrecentar sus jugosas ganancias?
De los casi 70 mil transplantes de riñones que se realizan en el mundo al año,10 por ciento proviene del mercado negro. En Estados Unidos murieron el año pasado 4 mil 540 personas en espera de un transplante de riñón, lo que ha hecho florecer su lucrativo mercado negro en todo el mundo. ¿Tendrá ramificaciones en los hospitales privados
de México?
Scheper-Hughes alega que en el hospital Monte Sinai de Nueva York se realizaban los transplantes de los riñones comprados por el rabino financiero Rosenbaum.
Otras fuentes más feroces –que invocan la complicidad del gobierno israelí
–, como las de Joseph Cannon (Los carniceros: la verdad oculta sobre el circuito de robo de riñones por Israel; 31/7/09), señalan al Albert Einstein Medical Center.
No puede existir tanta maldad ultraconcentrada en el planeta por lo que tampoco sería improbable que el rabino criminal Rosenbaum haya abusado de sus dotes religiosas para engañar a sus correligionarios médicos de Nueva York y Tel Aviv.
Cannon evoca que en el transcurso de los años, muchos (sic) han acusado a Israel de traficar con los órganos de los palestinos
. Entre los muchos
descuellan los relatos macabros desde hace 21 años del connotado autor británico David Yallop (8/2 y 30/10 de 1988).
Cannon exhuma los vínculos entre Ilan Peri, presunto tratante del gobierno israelí (en la jerga del Mossad: el Caballo, quien opera la cobertura protectiva de las inmundicias gubernamentales), y el rabino financiero Rosenbaum.
Jane’s (5/3/08), centro de pensamiento militar británico, expone el mercado negro expansivo del tráfico de órganos
dominado por tratantes sin escrúpulos y facilitado por las legislaciones nacionales inadecuadas, amplias prácticas corruptas y la ausencia general de alerta ciudadana sobre la extensión de su comercio
. Comenta que el comercio ilegal de partes del cuerpo es ampliamente dominado por los riñones debido a su gran demanda y por constituir los únicos órganos mayores que pueden ser transplantados enteramente con pocos riesgos relativos para el donador viviente
.
En este contexto barbárico, Aftonbladet, el periódico sueco de mayor circulación, reportó que los soldados israelíes raptan a palestinos para robar sus órganos
, lo cual provocó una iracunda reacción del gobierno israelí (Haaretz; 18/8/09). El autor, Donald Boström, vincula el robo de riñones palestinos al circuito criminal del rabino Rosenbaum.
En la tardía, cuan sorprendente exhibición de los rabinos lavadores de dinero y traficantes de riñones de Brooklyn, ¿tendrá algo que ver su pertenencia al grupo ultrarreligioso ortodoxo Chabad-Lubavitch y su alianza con el partido gobernante Shas, aliado del fundamentalista primer ministro del partido Likud, Bibi Netanyahu, quien ha declarado la guerra al plan de paz de Obama?
No se puede olvidar la reciente e indecente declaración de Manis Friedman, el mejor de los rabinos de Chabad-Lubavitch
(según Nathaniel Popper del portal hebreo The Forward), quien incitó a los judíos a matar a los hombres, mujeres, (sic) y niños (¡supersic!) árabes durante la guerra: la única manera de combatir una guerra moral (¡supersic!) es al estilo (sic) judío: destruyan sus sitios sagrados. Maten hombres, mujeres y niños (y su ganado)
. Agregó sin desparpajo: no creo en la moralidad occidental
(Haaretz; 9/6/09). Mejor aquí nos detenemos.
The Body Snatchers of Israel
Very important article by Kawther Salam for Palestinian Think Tank:
-------
Post-scriptum: also check out this interview of the Swedish journalist who wrote the orignial article:
(photo: numbered graves in secret cemetery in Israel) Independently of the recently published article of the Swedish journalist Donald Boström about the Israelis murdering Palestinians in order to harvesting of organs for sale, and independently of the hysteric screeching and 
denials by the Israelis, I want to present my readers what I witnessed, saw, observed and heard during my 22 years of journalistic work under the Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. My personal experience confirms what Mr. Boström wrote: while I do not know the particular case which he describes, it is typical for what the Israelis do in Palestine all the time, what is “normal” since the early seventies.
The Israeli military occupation started in the early 1970s to capture and keep the bodies of the Palestinians who they murdered. Since the early seventies, thousands of Palestinians have been buried in 
secret and number graves of the Israeli military. Since the early seventies, thousands of Palestinian victims of the occupation were “autopsied”, and many of their bodies kept in military numbered graves. Most members of the resistance who were killed were taken for “autopsy”, and also those who were wounded were abducted from the hospital by the Israelis. This practice became somewhat less widespread only when the PA came to power, meaning that people murdered in areas controlled by the PA were not “autopsied” any more, but this would still happen to people murdered or wounded in areas controlled by the Israelis.
The Israeli military leadership, the Central Command and the so-called “defense” Ministry cannot hide these well- and widely-known facts: the Israeli military murders people all the time, and most if not all of the murdered are taken for “autopsy”, many of them are buried in Israeli military cemeteries in numbered and secret graves. These facts cannot be hidden by the fancy statements issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel, by the deranged terrorist and war criminal Ehud Barak and the corrupt extremist Benjamin Netanyahu.
In many cases, the so-called “civil administration”, military commanders and 
officers were returning to their families the bodies of Palestinians who they had murdered after the middle of the night, and after a few days “detention” of the bodies. The military officers would call the families of the victim after the middle of the night (usually at 1-3 in the morning), demanding that a few relatives, “not more than 10”, wait on the street for burying the body.
The first condition of the military “civil” administration was that the burial should take place immediately after receiving the body, in the dark of the night, for “security reasons”, the second condition of the Israelis was that women should not participate in the secret funeral, also for “security reasons” (actually they wanted to avoid that the screams of grieving mothers, sisters, daughters of the victim would be heard, so alerting the neighbourhood to the crime). The Israeli officers always used “security reasons” to justify and cover up their criminal activities!
On each such occasion returning the body of one of their murdered victims, the 
“civil” military administration officers would follow the funeral procession, driving their armored grey cars and waiting until the end of the burial. A number of other military vehicles filled with soldiers would surround the funeral, watching the burial of their victims, always ready to shoot the small number of participants in the funeral. Of course, the officers would always insistently make it clear to the family that they were doing them a great favor in returning the body of their beloved one and allowing them to bury it.
Empty Bodies, Stuffed With Cotton
What is the reason to bury somebody in middle of the night, with a company of IDF soldiers and the Israeli military “civil” administration officers surrounding the procession? If the burial is normal, and the organs of the victims were not stolen, then why should they be buried in the dark of the night? The families of the victims all knew that they were receiving empty bodies, filled with cotton, to be buried in the middle of the night.
One fact for Ehud Barak: near the end of the first Intifada, after the start of the so-called Oslo peace negotiations, the brother-in-law of one of my paternal uncles was murdered by the Israelis at the Qalandia checkpoint, he was returned to his family stuffed with cotton some days after the incident. My uncles relative, Monzer Naji Rashid Abdullah, was a small transportation entrepreneur; he was not involved in political activities of any kind. He was murdered on 14 April 1991, two days before Eid Al-Adha, a festivity comparable to Christmas. As a result of his to date unpunished murder by Israelis manning the checkpoint, his wife and children were reduced to dependency on charities.
The deranged war criminal Ehud Barak and his corrupt “state” should better 
stop denying what the Swedish writer Donald Boström published in Aftonbladet. I personally was witness of the Israeli soldiers and military vehicles kidnapping the bodies of dead Palestinians from the emergency rooms of hospitals, in some other cases I saw the soldiers following the Palestinians to the cemetery, to steal the body from the family before the burial. This vile practice became so widespread that many people started carrying the bodies of the murdered to be buried at home, in the garden, under the house or under trees, instead of waiting for the ambulance to take them to the hospital.
The Israelis always murder or gravely injure some people at demonstrations, and first the Israeli soldiers themselves would take the bodies, then they would 
besiege the hospitals where the bodies were taken by Palestinian ambulances – finally people present at demonstrations started taking the murdered and injured directly to their families. Everybody in Palestine knows that the Israeli soldiers besiege the hospitals in order to kidnap the bodies. The most disgusting thing I witnessed was when the criminal soldiers of Barak and Netanyahu were following Palestinian funeral processions to the cemetery to kidnap the bodies.
The issue of stealing the Palestinian organs is known to everybody in Palestine. I reported several times about this crime. In many cases my reports were rejected by the criminal military censorship of the occupation, these reports are until this moment stored at the military censorship office in “Bet Agron” in occupied Jerusalem.
I know that the criminal “state of Israel” was harvesting the organs of Palestinians who were kidnapped by the Israeli military from the emergency 
rooms of the Palestinian hospitals in Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah, Jenin, and everywhere in the West Bank and Gaza, and transferred to the Israeli hospital (or rather, butchery) of Abu Kabir in Tel Aviv. The families of the victims know the criminal israeli officers of the so-called “civil administration” who were covering this crime. Everybody knew Captain Eyal, Col. Fuad Hahul, Col. Amnon Cohen (now head of the “infrastructure department” of the “civil” administration in occupied Palestine), Rafi Geoli, “Alex”, and many other officers whose name I don’t know, but who were always present.
Everybody knew the higher commanders, above them brigadier general 
(res.) Gadi Zohar, (former head of the civil administration, and IDF intelligence officer for 30 years), brigadier general (res.) David Shafi (former head of the civil administration), Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni (former IDF brigade in Hebron and the current head of the central command), Col. Baruch Goldstein (formerly with the IDF “civil” administration in Hebron and currently with the municipality of Jerusalem), Lt.Col. Baruch Nagar (former head of the civil administration and the current head of the water administration for the West Bank and Gaza), Col. Yigal Sharon, (former brigade of Hebron and the current, Coffee Salesman), Brigadier General (res.) Dov Sedaka, (former head of the civil administration and the current head of the zionist Chairman of the steering committee), Maj.Gen. Matan Vilnai, Brigadier General Noam Tivon, Col. Yehuda Fuchs, Lt. Col. Udi ben Muha, the military commander of Hebron, and others. And everybody knew that these people were involved in the harvesting of organs of their victims.
Captain Eyal, Col. Fuad Halhal, Col. Amnon Cohen, Rafi Geoli and 
many of those mentioned above and many others were the ones calling the families of the murdered Palestinians, in the middle of the night to inform them about the bodies of their loved ones. These criminals were telling the Palestinian families that they “had worked hard to make it possible to release the bodies of their relatives from the military headquarter” – implying that it was a favor, and that the military commanders Shamni, Goldstein, Nagar, … had ordered that the bodies should be buried in the dark and that “not more than ten persons” were allowed to be present at the funeral.
Often the relatives of the murdered people were screaming and shouting, as they had received an empty body stuffed with cotton. These criminal officers and their soldiers forced them to shut up.
All this criminal activity is not only a clear violation of the human rights, a horrendous crime against humanity, but a disrespect of the sanctity of life which can only be explained with mental deficiencies of the perpetrators.
If Israel did not steal the ORGANS of the murdered Palestinians, and if Israel did not want to cover up their inhuman crimes, and if Israel respects the Geneva conventions and other humanitarian laws, in peace and in war, then Israel would not kidnap and transfer to the Abu Kabir “hospital” in Tel Aviv hundreds, perhaps thousands of Palestinians bodies of people who were murdered during PEACE demonstrations in the cities of the West Bank.
If it is not true that Israelis are harvesting the organs of murdered Palestinians, then why were they transferring the bodies of their victims to be butchered at Abu Kabir? The reasons of the death were known. The victims all received bullets in the head, or in the chest by Israeli snipers.
After all the whining and screeching of the Israelis after the Swedish newspaper article, the fact stands that hundreds, perhaps thousands of bodies and even people known to have been alive were transferred to the Abu Kabir autopsy center and returned to their families stuffed with cotton. Hundreds of victims who were buried in the dark by their families, and hundreds or thousands more bodies which Israel keeps in their numbered graves.
During the first Intifada and during the so called peace time I personally 
witnessed how the Israeli military were kidnapping Palestinian bodies and gravely injured people from the emergency room of Princess Alia hospital in Hebron. Some years later I also witnessed how the Israeli army kidnapped the bodies of the Palestinian dead from the then new Al-Ahli hospital: All the area would be declared military zone, the hospital surrounded and invaded by troops, nobody was allowed to move inside the building. All these kidnapped bodies of Palestinians, and also people known to have been living, were killed before taken to Abu Kabir for “autopsy”.
Taking in consideration these facts, everything I know, and until Israel comes clean on who are the members of the organ harvesting mafia, the only conclusion is that:
- All the Israeli officers and civil personnel of the so-called civil administration who served in the West Bank since the early seventies were involved at least covering up the harvesting of organs from Palestinians, at the very least conniving, but probably taking part in the racket for money.
- All the Israeli doctors and other personnel who worked in Abu Kabir since the early seventies were involved in harvesting and selling organs from Palestinians.
- All the IDF snipers and other soldiers who shot Palestinian (and foreigners) at peace demonstrations are and were involved with the mafia which harvests and sells the organs of murdered Palestinians, at least some of the involved in the crimes are given money.
- The IDF central command and most if not all officers in the chain of command until the field fully know what is going on, and they connive with the harvesting of organs from Palestinians they murder, they offer planning and logistics for the commission of the crimes, and make the families of the victims shut up. All the Israeli State and the whole Israeli Nation who accept the continued military occupation are involved in crimes against humanity.
- Most if not all the Israeli medical establishment knows what is going on, and they keep silence because they either get money, or they are rewarded in other ways for conniving in these crimes. This is confirmed because of repeated complaints of doctors from other countries because Israel is one of the few jurisdictions which does not forbid commerce with human organs and body parts.
- The Israeli health ministry is fully informed of what goes on. This would be corroborated by reports that organ traffickers captured in Brazil and South Africa in 2003 stated as much as that they had been given “business contacts” by “people from the Israeli government”, and that the Israeli government financed organ transplants.
I think that the Israeli government and all those suspected of being involved have some hard questions to answer, rather than complaining about a well written report in a Swedish newspaper which speaks about only one case among thousands:
- Where are the bodies of the two brothers Imad and Adel Awad Allah from Al-Bireh in the district of Ramallah, who were murdered on 10 September 1998 on the farm of Akram Maswadeh near Hebron?
- Where are the bodies of Hani Ahmad Kharboush and Adel Mohammad Hadaideh who were murdered on 6 June 2003 in “Ateel”, a town north of Tulkarem in the West Bank?
- Where is the body of Sarhan Borhan who was murdered on 4 October 2003 in the Tulkarem refugee camp?
- Where is the body of Hasan Isa Abbas who was murdered on 9 October 1994, in Jerusalem?
- Where is the body of Hisham Hamad who was murdered in Gaza on 11 November 1993?
- Where is the body of Salah Jad Allah Salem who was murdered on 14 October 1994?
- Where are the bodies of the two Japanese citizens who were murdered in 1972?
- Can Israel prove that the organs of these people, and those of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of Palestinians which are buried in numbered graves of the Israeli military, were not stolen?
- Why does Israel bury the victims of their occupation in secret, numbered graves, if their organs were not stolen?
I know the answer of the criminal sophists of Israel in advance: they will say 
that all these people buried their numbered graves were “terrorists or unknown”. But I say that these are LIES and the usual propaganda which Israel uses to cover their crimes. Many people who were buried in these graves were not “terrorists” but legitimate resistance, many of them were peace demonstrators, and none of them were unknown. The only thing unknown or silenced until now is that the israelis are murderers, thieves of organs, a criminal occupational state which commits to all kind of crimes against humanity for fun and profit.
Dr. Yehuda Hiss Butchered Three Teenagers From Gaza
Another issue about which the Israelis have some explaining to do is the story of three teenagers from Gaza. On the evening of Sunday 30 December 2001 the Israeli military occupation fired several artillery shells towards these three north of Beit Lahiya in Gaza. They were Ahmed Mohammed Banat, 15 years, Mohammed Abd El-Rahman Al- Madhoun, 16 years and Mohamed Ahmed Lebed, 17 years.
After murdering them with flechette shells, a military vehicle drove 
over one of them, and their bodies were delivered to Abu Kabir in Tel Aviv, for “autopsy”, without the consent of their families, and without the issuance of a warrant to conduct an autopsy according to the law. The chief pathologist at Abu Kabir (the so-called “Israeli forensic institute”) Dr. Yehuda Hiss, said that they received the children without knowing their names, they had all been found killed by nails which the tank shell contained (flechettes).
Hiss broke the law Israeli when he accepted the bodies of the children without knowing who are were and without the knowledge of their families, but that is of no concern. The bodies the three were given to the PA stuffed with cotton several days after their murder.
The director of the Jerusalem Center for Democracy and Human Rights, Salim Khalleh, stated that their organization has been able to document 270 cases of Palestinian bodies “reserved” in hands of the Israeli occupation, which are buried in numbered graves in secret military cemeteries, or in numbered compartments of cooling facilities. Among these cases, 24 are of Palestinian citizens of the city of Tulkarem. On 8 April 2009 the families of these persons whose bodies are still in the power of the israelis held a demonstration in Tulkarem. The demonstrators presented a petition to the director of Red Cross, in which they demanded that the international organizations make pressure on Israel to release the bodies of their sons.
What follows are some of the names of Palestinians published by the Jerusalem Center for Democracy and Human Rights and whose bodies still in the hands of Israel, among other hundreds. The question is, where are these bodies? Are they in the refrigerated facilities, or were they buried in numbered graves after their organs were harvested? Why are they not returned to their families if not because Israeli crimes must be covered up?
- Abdel-Fattah Mohamed Badir – murdered near Jericho on 15-7-1975.
- Murad Mohammed Abu Assal – murdered on 30-1-2002.
- Sarhan Burhan Sarhan – murdered during the invasion of the Tulkarem refugee camp on 4-10-2003.
- Saif Allah Bashir Badran – murdered near the illegal Mawr colony on 1-1-2003.
- Adel Mohamed Hadaydeh – murdered in “Atteel”, a town north of Tulkarem on 16-6 -2003.
- Tarek Samir Sfaqeh – murdered in the illegal Hermesh colony on 30-10-2002 .
- Faiz Mohammed Awad – murdered in Lebanon on 17-8-1967.
- Ramzi Fakhri Ardah – murdered on 3-4 – 2004 in the illegal Avnei Hefetz colony.
- Khalid Ahmed Abul-Ezz – murdered on 30-10-2002 in Zeita near the Apartheid wall.
- Khaled Subhi Sandjak – murdered in the illegal colony of Sha’ar Ephraim.
- Muaiad Mahmoud Salah Al-Din – blew himself up on 8-11-2001.
- Abed El-Basset Mohamed Odeh – blew himself up on 27-3-2002.
- Ahmed Sami Gawi - murdered in Netanya on 12-7-2005.
- Mohammad Jamel Faraj.
- Ahmed Ibrahim Abed Allah – murdered in Jerusalem June 1967.
- Iyad Naeem Radad – murdered on 15-7-1979 in Al-Zawieh near Salfit.
- Rami Mohammed Idris – murdered in Netanya on 31-3-2002.
- Mahmoud Ahmed Marmash – blew himself up on 18-5-2001.
- Mufed Mohammad Asrawi – murdered at Baqa Al-Garbiah on 21-2-2002.
- Muhammad Ali Abu Zeneh – murdered in the Jordan Valley on 12-5-1969.
- Lutfi Amin Abu Saada – blew himself up in Netanya on 25-12-2006.
- Omani Ahmad Kryosh – murdered in “Atteel” town near Tulkarem on 5-6-2003.
- Mashhour Aruri - murdered on 18 May 1976 together with other three persons from Lebanon.
- The bodies of 88 Palestinian from Gaza who are known to be in the hand of Israel (no names given).
- Abed Allah Kallab and his friends Mohamed Abed El-Qader Abu Al-Zulof and Mohamed Hanafi – all from the Rafah refugee camp, disappeared on 7 March 1988.
- Fadi Ahmed Al-Amoudi age 22 years from Beit Hanoun – murdered on 17 April 2004 at the Erez military checkpoint
Abed Al-Naser Ferwana, Director of the Department of Statistics, at the 
Ministry of Prisoners in the Palestinian National Authority, a former prisoner and researcher about Palestinian prisoners of Israel, a competent speaker for prisoners affairs, said that the number of Palestinian prisoners who were murdered after their arrest and detention in the Israeli jails sharply increased during the Al-Aqsa Intifada. They are in sum the double of the number of people who the Israelis murdered in a quarter of century since they occupied the West Bank and Gaza. The bodies of these murdered prisoners are also kept in the secret Israeli cemeteries, in a few cases the dead are released two weeks after the Israelis murder them. This is a new proof that the Israelis harvest their organs according to Ferawneh.
The deranged criminal Ehud Barak, the people from the Israeli Central Command, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the others involved in these subhuman crimes should stop threatening Swedish journalist Donald Boström with criminal complaints, as they are the first persons who should be investigated not only for these monstrosities, but also for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The time of silencing journalists and curtailing freedom of speech is over.
The public opinion of the world is loath the criminality of Israel and the repetitive and stupid screeching of “anti-semitism” whenever one of their crimes is uncovered. Constant and inappropriate invocation of the holocaust is boring to the point where nobody cares anymore, and it does not help anymore to cover up their crimes. The criminal sophists of Israel would better clarify were all these bodies are buried, and were their organs are.
If the Israelis go forward and cause troubles for Donald Boström in court, I will volunteer to testify in his favor about these disgusting crimes of the Israelis, and I appeal to all Palestinians who have such a case in their family, to also offer to testify in favor of Mr. Boström should this become necessary.
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Post-scriptum: also check out this interview of the Swedish journalist who wrote the orignial article:
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