Kosovo organ trafficking: Williamson to head EU probe

In the meantime, the EU is investigating the other "democratic" US/NATO ally in the Mediterranean region: the KLA and its leader, Hashim Thaci for, of all things, Israeli-style organ trafficking.  Just like the Israelis harvested organs from their Palestinian victims, the Kosovo Albanians harvested organs from their Serbian victims.

The report was based on a two-year investigation led by special rapporteur Dick Marty, and it named Mr Thaci - who was the wartime political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) - 27 times.  Organs were taken from prisoners killed by the KLA after the 1999 war against Serb forces

Rebel commanders allegedly ran detention centres in Albania's border with Kosovo, where civilian captives, including Serbs, were killed and their organs sold on the black market.

The US Empire can really be proud of its allies...

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&section=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&sectionid=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!

¿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 el financiamiento por Israel de transplantes de órganos en otros países de 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.