More Evidence May Support Israeli Organ Harvesting Swedish Story

[Muslimah]

http://current.com/items/90812572_more-evi...edish-story.htm


Last week Sweden’s largest daily newspaper published an article containing shocking material: testimony and circumstantial evidence indicating that Israelis may have been harvesting internal organs from Palestinian prisoners without consent for many years.


(Picture used here is the FBI arrest of several Jewish Rabbis accused of buying and selling human organs and having the money sent to Israel. Courtesy of www.netdor.com)


Worse yet, some of the information reported in the article suggests that in some instances Palestinians may have been captured with this macabre purpose in mind.


In the article, “Our sons plundered for their organs,” veteran journalist Donald Bostrom writes that Palestinians “harbor strong suspicions against Israel for seizing young men and having them serve as the country’s organ reserve – a very serious accusation, with enough question marks to motivate the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to start an investigation about possible war crimes.”1/


An army of Israeli officials and apologists immediately went into high gear, calling both Bostrom and the newspaper’s editors “anti-Semitic.” The Israeli foreign minister was reportedly “aghast” and termed it “a demonizing piece of blood libel.” An Israeli official called it “hate porn.”


Commentary magazine wrote that the story was “merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of European funded and promoted anti-Israel hate.” Numerous people likened the article to the medieval “blood libel,” (widely refuted stories that Jews killed people to use their blood in religious rituals). Even some pro-Palestinian writers joined in the criticism, expressing skepticism.


The fact is, however, that substantiated evidence of public and private organ trafficking and theft, and allegations of worse, have been widely reported for many years. Given such context, the Swedish charges become far more plausible than might otherwise be the case and suggest that an investigation could well turn up significant information.


At the Link are a few examples of previous reports on this topic.


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At first, I was in disbelief as well as "lets wait for more evidence" mode. Now, I am still in this mode, however, I am starting to lean towards the initial story by the Swedish Newspaper. I am cautious to go full tilt on this because this is a serious allegation. I dont want to hurt anyone who is innocent. But tallying up all the human rights violations and bloodshed the Israeli government has committed----besides breaking International laws repeatedly--and the new evidence presented in this story, my feelings are that there is some substance to these allegations. I still want to find more evidence. It is just too hard to believe that humans would do this kind of evil. I don't want to believe it. But like I said, my feelings are starting to lean to 'believing'.


Read the story, and come to your own conclusions. Below, in comments, I posted what evidence and news articles (from known sources) that were used to back up the writers story. I'm still hoping it is not true.

[Muslimah]

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleea...1551898444.html


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.