Israel harvesting Palestinian organs?...

[Andrei Kuznetsov]

Unconfirmed, but still... I think I just *gulp* threw up a little bit in my mouth...

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1108384.html

Top Sweden newspaper says IDF kills Palestinians for their organs http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/images/0.gif
By Morten Berthelsen and Barak Ravid ([email protected]), Haaretz Correspondent
A leading Swedish newspaper reported this week that Israeli soldiers are abducting Palestinians in order to steal their organs, a claim that prompted furious condemnation and accusations of anti-Semitic blood libel from a rival publication.

"They plunder the organs of our sons," read the headline in Sweden's largest daily newspaper, the left-leaning Aftonbladet, which devoted a double spread in its cultural section to the article.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/images/0.gif

(Click here (http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab) for the original article in Swedish)

The report quotes Palestinian claims that young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by the Israel Defense Forces, and their bodies returned to the families with missing organs.

"'Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,' relatives of Khaled from Nablus said to me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin as well as the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who all had disappeared for a few days and returned by night, dead and autopsied," writes author Donald Boström in his report.

Boström's article makes a link to the recent exposure of an alleged crime syndicate in New Jersey. The syndicate includes several American rabbis, and one Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, who faces charges of conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant.

(Click here (http://blogg.sydsvenskan.se/snallposten/2009/08/17/antisemitbladet/) for the opinion piece in Swedish)

Boström also cites an incident of alleged organ snatching from 1992, during the time of the first Palestinian intifada. He says that the IDF seized a young man known for throwing stones at Israeli troops in the Nablus area, who was shot in the chest, both legs, and the stomach before being taken to a military helicopter which transported him to "a place unknown to his loved ones".

Five nights later, Boström says, the young man's body was returned, wrapped in green hospital sheets.

"The sharp sounds from the shovels were mixed with the occasional laughter from the soldiers who were joking with each other, waiting to go home. When Bilal was put into his grave, his chest was revealed and suddenly it became clear to the present what abuse he had been put through. Bilal was far from the only one who was buried cut-up from his stomach to his chin and the speculations about the reason why had already started," he writes.

But the liberal Sydsvenskan - southern Sweden's major daily - had harsh criticism for the rival paper, running an opinion piece under the headline "Antisemitbladet" (a play on the name Aftonbladet).

"We have heard the story before, in one form or the other. It follows the traditional pattern of conspiracy theory: a great number of loose threads that the theorist tempts the reader to tie into a neat knot without having been provided with any proven connection whatsoever," writes leading columnist Mats Skogkär of Sydsvenskan.

"Whispers in the dark. Anonymous sources. Rumors. That is all it takes. After all we all know what they [the Jews] are like, don't we: inhuman, hardened. Capable of anything," the opinion piece says. "Now all that remains is the defense, equally predictable: 'Anti-Semitism' No, no, just criticism of Israel."

The Foreign Ministry reacted angrily on Tuesday to the report. Ministry spokesperson Yigal Palmor said the newspaper's decision to publish the story is "a mark of disgrace" for the Swedish press.

"In a democratic country, there should be no place for dark blood libels out of the Middle Ages of this type," Palmor said. "This is an article that shames Swedish democracy and the entire Swedish press."

A Foreign Ministry official said that Israel's embassy in Stockholm have communicated a harsh condemnation to the Swedish government and the newspaper itself.

Anna Ekström and Mikael Tossavainen contributed to this report

[Angry Young Man]

The biggest tragedy is that even if this comes out true, nothing will change in attitudes towards Israel.

[Revy]

Oh here we go again, with this "criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism" BS.

[n0thing]

This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen written about this conflict. The IDF want to maintain Israel's territorial dominance. I find it incredibly unlikely that they also do some freelance grave-robbing on the side.

Most likely Hamas propaganda, designed to enrage the idiots. It sounds like a cheap horror film.

[Revy]

It sounds like a cheap horror film.

Right, because real life is so pleasant and innocent. :rolleyes:

[khad]

This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen written about this conflict. The IDF want to maintain Israel's territorial dominance. I find it incredibly unlikely that they also do some freelance grave-robbing on the side.

Most likely Hamas propaganda, designed to enrage the idiots. It sounds like a cheap horror film.
What are you on about? The West did some opportunistic organ harvesting in Yugoslavia. I don't see what is so unbelievable about this.

Now attack me for anti-Semitism.

[gorillafuck]

I'd like to have this proven before I fully believe it. Why would Israel want Palestinian's organs?:confused:

[#FF0000]

I'd like to have this proven before I fully believe it. Why would Israel want Palestinian's organs?:confused:

Do you know what the street value of a fresh Liver is?

[Black Dagger]

"'Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,' relatives of Khaled from Nablus said to me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin as well as the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who all had disappeared for a few days and returned by night, dead and autopsied," writes author Donald Boström in his report.


Perhaps the organs were removed during the autopsy rather than 'harvested'?

[Reuben]

yeah this article has already been debunked. You can support palestine without being completely credulous to every blood-libel like story about israel.

[Reuben]

It sounds like a cheap horror film.

You're onto something here. A few years ago a film was released that was very popular in the Arab and muslim world called 'Vallley of The Wolves.' It contained a jewish american doctor who harvested arab organs and sent them to america and israel.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

This is not unbelievable actually, organ stealing happens a lot, especially in war.

[Pirate turtle the 11th]

Right, because real life is so pleasant and innocent. :rolleyes:

Your so hardened and gruff. :)

[n0thing]

What are you on about? The West did some opportunistic organ harvesting in Yugoslavia. I don't see what is so unbelievable about this.

Now attack me for anti-Semitism.
Lol. Is this about those Serbian agents who'd turned out to have been offered all sorts of luxuries in exchange for horror story confessions?

You aren't an anti-semite. You're a bit of an idiot though.

[khad]

Lol. Is this about those Serbian agents who'd turned out to have been offered all sorts of luxuries in exchange for horror story confessions?
Try war crimes investigations against the KLA and the lucrative black market organ trade to the West.

There are no "Serbian agents" because the POWs who passed through those KLA camps are all fucking dead.



KLA Organ Harvesting Atrocity

Jun 30th, 2008 | By De-Construct.net (http://de-construct.net/e-zine/?author=1) | In Featured Articles (http://de-construct.net/e-zine/?cat=18), Kosovo-Metohija Crisis (http://de-construct.net/e-zine/?cat=119)
http://byzantinesacredart.com/blog/images/kosovo/organ-harvesting2.jpg
Kosovo Albanian Organ Harvesting Atrocities Investigated by the Council of Europe

On Wednesday, June 25, the Council of Europe appointed (http://uk.reuters.com/article/europeCrisis/idUKL2517232920080625) Swiss senator Dick Marty to investigate charges that Kosovo Albanian terrorist KLA (UCK) were using kidnapped Kosovo-Metohija Serbs to harvest their organs for sale during and after the civil war in southern Serbian province.

The charges that Kosovo Albanians, led by the war criminals currently governing Kosovo and Metohija province — Hashim Thaci, Agim Ceku and Ramush Haradinaj — had profited from selling human organs of abducted Serbs were first brought forth in the book “The Hunt: Me and the War Criminals” by Carla Del Ponte, former chief prosecutor of the war crimes tribunal in the Hague.

Del Ponte’s book describes (http://www.byzantinesacredart.com/blog/2008/03/harrowing-truth.html) the plight of one group of some 300 Kosovo province Serbs, who were transported to neighboring Albania in 1999, while NATO troops were already present in the province, where they were held in camps and subjected to forced organ extractions. United States-based non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch said it has corroborated (http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/05/05/serbia18710.htm) Del Ponte’s allegations.

Responding to requests by the Russian Federation, the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly decided that the charges merit a full investigation. Dick Marty, a Swiss lawyer who became famous for investigating CIA secret torture chambers and rendition flights through Europe, was asked by the 47-nation pan-European organization to investigate the most morbid chain of war crimes after the WWII.

Both Del Ponte and a number of Serbs have pointed (http://byzantinesacredart.com/blog/2008/05/blod-trail-to-kouchner.html) to the involvement of UNMIK officials who prevented earlier investigations and averted each attempt to reach the kidnapped Serbs while they were still alive and held imprisoned by the Albanian KLA butchers in improvised camps throughout Kosovo-Metohija province, suggesting that the logistics and the scope of these atrocities went far beyond the KLA terrorists and that some of the top Western politicians and senior UNMIK leaders were involved in the harrowing series of war crimes.

In an article published yesterday, Belgrade daily offers transcript (http://www.kurir-info.rs/clanak/politika/kurir-30-06-2008/nato-diluje-organe) of the secretly taped conversation between Javier Solana and Wesley Clark, contents of which indicates that NATO leaders were not only aware of the ongoing monstrosity, but also involved in it.

Kosovo Albanian Organ Harvesting Atrocity, New Testimonies

Feb 3rd, 2009 | By [1] De-Construct.net (http://de-construct.net/e-zine/?author=1) |

KLA organ trafficking routes, by Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti
KLA Death Camps, on Land and Sea

Former KLA fighter claims that kidnapped and imprisoned Kosovo Serbs had their organs extracted for sale not only in Albania, but also on the ships sailing through the international waters, as well as in Italy, North Africa and Middle East.

In its latest edition, Belgrade weekly NIN carries statement of a mercenary and former member of the KLA (UCK, Kosovo Albanian terrorist formation) with initials I.T, who testified about transporting one group of captured Kosovo Serbs to Tirana and Durres in Albania where, with the help of “common” human traffickers, he transferred them to a ship which sailed out to international waters of Adriatic Sea.

According to the witness, that is where surgeons, mainly from Western countries, “dismantled them to their constituent parts”, as the operation of extracting vital organs for sale was referred to by the KLA.

This KLA member, whose name is known to NIN redaction and who is responsible for multiple kidnappings and murders committed in 1999, testified that he drove two waste disposal trucks from Kosovo through Paštrik. One carried the corpses of killed Kosovo Serbs, while in the second he transported the kidnapped Serbs who were still alive. They were first tortured and then killed in KLA death camps in Tropoje and Peshkopi, in Albania.
The main individuals responsible for transfer of victims from southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija, according to the witnesses, were Daut Haradinaj ([2] Ramush Haradinaj (http://www.trial-ch.org/en/trial-watch/profile/db/facts/ramush_haradinaj_322.html)’s brother), Sami Lushtaku and Jakup Krasniqi.

One Albanian witness, who was imprisoned in the KLA camp Lapushnik, testified that Krasniqi and Hashim Thaçi (current “prime minister” of Kosovo province, appointed by the US-led NATO) directly participated in tortures in the camp, and are responsible for murders of the kidnapped Serbs imprisoned in Lapushnik.

According to the witnesses, in organ harvesting and trade, KLA was also being helped by some mujahedeen with “good connections” in the Middle East hospitals.

Some KLA members who participated in the removal of bodies of the killed Serbs from Kosovo, claimed that a number of captured Serb soldiers, after torture, were dismembered in Kukes, and their remains have long been buried in the Kukes city cemetery. Soon after the war, it was discovered some of the captured Yugoslav Army soldiers ended up on surgical tables in Valona (Vlore, Albania) hospitals, where their organs were harvested for the benefit of the rich buyers from Western Europe and Middle East states.

Others were transported by ships to Italy and North Africa, where they were used in the same way, and the same harrowing fate befell Kosovo Serb civilians who were kidnapped in 1999, after Yugoslav Army withdrew and NATO took over the safety and governing of the Serbian province.

[Salabra]

OK, now this is utter and total bullshit —a “modern,” “progressive” and “revolutionary” version of the famous Blood Libel, that has been levelled against jews for nearly 2,000 years.

For those of you unfamiliar with this rubbish, it goes back to the Greek Appian, who claimed that jews sacrificed Greeks in the Temple in Jerusalem, but it became part of general European (christian) folklore with the case of William of Norwich in 1144. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel_against_Jews for the whole history of this sick slander — oh, dear, I hear the pro-HAMAS faction saying, “But Wikipedia lies,” to which I reply, “Not all the time.”)

And the crap is still being repeated. In December 1984, the Saudi Arabian delegate and President of the World Muslim Congress Dr. Ma'ruf al-Dawalibi, speaking before the UN Human Rights Commission conference on religious tolerance, stated,
Jews have indeed been the victims of discriminations throughout the centuries. But why? Let them answer this question themselves. The Talmud says that any Jew who does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jew will be damned forever.
Yet, the consumption of blood (animal or human) is forbidden to jews by the dietary laws known as kashrut — once again, for those of you unfamiliar with these, they are, with minor variations, identical to the islamic code called the dhabiha halal.

I leave the final word to the German emperor Frederick II (obviously a notable member of the IDF) who stated,
Neither the Old nor the New Testament states that the Jews lust for human blood: on the contrary, it is expressly stated in the Bible, in the laws of Moses, and in the Jewish ordinances designated in Hebrew as the 'Talmud,' that they should not defile themselves with blood.
What is my point in this essay into history? Simply to show that, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

So, what is my “interest” in this matter? What is my political position?

Firstly, I have both personal and political reasons to stand against the Zionist state.


First the personal. My partner is a jewish woman of Moroccan descent. Her grandfather was educated in the UK and France — but when he took his family to the newly founded state of Israel, they were referred to as “shvartser” (“blacks” — actually more like “niggers”), and treated like dirt. Many Zionists, who were usually of European origin, felt that jews of Eastern descent didn’t “deserve” Israel, that they hadn’t “suffered enough,” or worse had “collaborated” with muslims.



Please do not imagine that, because of this personal interest, I am “soft on judaism.” I will as happily criticize that religion (from within or without) as readily as I will criticize any other — after all, judaism regards my partner and me as “unnatural.”



Politically, I denounce the Zionist state as an aggressive min-imperialist power, a proxy of US imperialism in the Middle East and an oppressor of the Palestinians. Thus, I would physically defend the Palestinian people from the Zionist state...



…BUT I will not countenance any movement whose aim, to use the currently popular phrase, is to “push the jews into the sea.” The jewish people, as well as the Hebrew-speaking nation that currently occupies the physical area, known as “Palestine,” has a right to exist.



Nor will I give one skerrick of political support to the reactionary pack of clerical nationalists known as the PLO, al-Fatah, HAMAS, or whatever they happen to call themselves this week. The solution to the “Middle East Problem” does not lie in nationalist two-state (or one-state) solutions or in pandering to muslim, jewish or christian religious mumbo-jumbo, but in socialist revolution mobilising all the oppressed of the region.

But my anger —and the basis for my crying “shame” on any of you who would believe this story — is that I’m a communist, not a Nazi, a member of Solidarność, or a muslim or christian religious fanatic.

Or a member of the SWP either!

[jake williams]

Israel is a highly militarized, fanatically racist society and its soldiers are known for their unusually contemptuous views of the inhabitants of the land they occupy. This isn't my own view - this is the view of left-wing Israelis and quasi-exiles I know, and other people I know who have gone there and are familiar at all with the society. They just don't treat Palestinians like human beings. But this would hardly be the worst thing soldiers have done in almost any war. That said, I'm sure there are plenty of Israelis who would refuse Palestinian organs if they knew of their origin.

But all that said, the article doesn't seem to provide anything other than circumstantial evidence - it may or may not be worth further investigation, but the article doesn't itself present a convincing case.

[RevolverNo9]

Far more substantial evidence would be needed to give credence to this - and as several have said, there is an uncomfortable parallel to traditional anti-semitic tropes. It would be unwise, if not irresponsible, to cite these stories in a political context.

Salabra:

Both your attack on Zionism and the the casual conducting of racist stereotypes is to be applauded - I agree entirely. But I hope that your objections to Hamas (which, I trust, are not based on similarly cheap, constructed images of that movement or of political Islam in general...) does not also seek to deny that organisation the right to resist the full brutalities of the Zionist state and its military might...


…BUT I will not countenance any movement whose aim, to use the currently popular phrase, is to “push the jews into the sea.” The jewish people, as well as the Hebrew-speaking nation that currently occupies the physical area, known as “Palestine,” has a right to exist.

Who is denying this though?


The solution to the “Middle East Problem” does not lie in nationalist two-state (or one-state) solutions or in pandering to muslim, jewish or christian religious mumbo-jumbo, but in socialist revolution mobilising all the oppressed of the region.

This sounds unobjectionable - but what is the strategic content in statements such as this? We can all here cry 'socialism' or 'the working-class' but what is the content of a revolutionary strategy for proletarian power in a particlar historical context?


But my anger —and the basis for my crying “shame” on any of you who would believe this story — is that I’m a communist, not a Nazi, a member of Solidarność, or a muslim or christian religious fanatic.

Or a member of the SWP either!

Oh, come on!

[svenne]

In Sweden, there is at the moment a very large campaign against the left and left-wing critic of Israel, with the usual anti-sionism is anti-semitism theme.
To follow this and just dismiss every critic as anti-semite is not good at all, and the right-wing are happier than they've ever been, since they now have the chance to remove several left-wingeres whom are not anti-semites but anti-sionists, in just a sweep.

When you then put yourself in the position of criticizing Aftonbladet or Donal Boström, without even reading the original article, you are putting yourself to use by the upper class. Please don't do that.

I have read the article by Donald Boström, and i am interested in good critic against it, not just "this is just old anti-semitism". If this had happened in any other country, i am pretty sure that a good investigation would be started.

[aty]

The Foreign Ministry reacted angrily on Tuesday to the report. Ministry spokesperson Yigal Palmor said the newspaper's decision to publish the story is "a mark of disgrace" for the Swedish press.

"In a democratic country, there should be no place for dark blood libels out of the Middle Ages of this type," Palmor said. "This is an article that shames Swedish democracy and the entire Swedish press."

A Foreign Ministry official said that Israel's embassy in Stockholm have communicated a harsh condemnation to the Swedish government and the newspaper itself.
And the Israeli ambassador Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier says that the article is "shocking and appaling to us Swedes". Yes it is very shocking and appaling but it is what the Israelis does to palestinians that has shocked us Swedes. The Swedish ambassador in Israel have met demands of her resignation, after this comment. The public opinion in Sweden is very pro-palestinian.

[Comrade B]

If it is known that this article is a fake, the thread should be trashed.
If you guys want to talk about organ harvesting in general, make a different threat without a title from an article based on anti-Semitic propaganda. (because that is what it is, not because criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic)
Or we can keep this on and make a couple posts with head lines of Gypsies Kidnap Children, and Reds Murder Innocents, with a link to some 1900s articles.

Also, don't criticize the guy for posting a bad article.
He said

Unconfirmedat the start, and the article was in a legitimate newspaper. If this were true, it would be a big story.

[chegitz guevara]

It's very common for people to accuse their oppressors of organ stealing and the like. Under the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, blood from local blood banks used to be sold in the United States. The people refereed to the blood banks as the House of Dracula. Conservatives in the U.S. claim that people executed by China are used for organ harvesting. It's a variation on the "our enemies are cannibals" theme, and as another poster noted, the blood libel as well.

[Abc]

i could see Israel doing this is if they was poor and needed money to buy weapons, but Israel is rich and gets all its weapons directly from the U.S., the only reason i could think this would be done is too provide organs for rich Israelies who need transplants, but you cant just go out and get a liver from some random guy and stick it someone else it requires alot of tests first so basicily you would have to kidnaps dozens if not hundreds of palestians before you found a match which would be make much bigger head lines

[Salyut]

Perhaps the organs were removed during the autopsy rather than 'harvested'?

Thats exactly what it sounds like. :bored: Don't they generally remove organs during autopsy for biopsies and stuff, then cremate them?

[9]

I'm extremely suspicious of this. It sounds very much like the blood libel myths, and I think it is unwise to spread this sort of thing around before it has been confirmed. Plus - and maybe I am teetering on the brink of conspiratorial logic here - it seems like the sort of tripe that the Zionists love (which I almost suspect is why Ha'aretz picked it up) because they can point to it and say, "see, look at the rabid anti-Semitism being spread all over the world about Israel; we need to "defend" ourselves".
I'm not saying that it is impossible that its true, but I very much doubt it is. Ignoring the parallels to blood libel completely, the idea that the IDF would snatch up Palestinians for the sake of harvesting their organs and then send the corpses back to the families just seems ludicrous. I'm not putting the brutality of the alleged crimes past the IDF, but why would they send the corpses, with missing organs, back to the families? Why not just dispose of them and destroy the evidence? Makes no sense.

[Andrei Kuznetsov]

After further research, it seems that other than 2 articles there is no evidence to support this. It's possible, but now I'm beginning to question the reliability of my own post.

Admins: do what you like with this.

[progressive_lefty]

A leading Swedish newspaper reported this week that Israeli soldiers are abducting Palestinians in order to steal their organs, a claim that prompted furious condemnation and accusations of anti-Semitic blood libel from a rival publication.


I would not be surprised, kind of goes in line with what the IDF has been doing to the civillian populations of Southern Lebanon and Gaza with thier airplanes.

[aty]

All of this is top-news in Sweden right now.

It looks like it has developed into a diplomatic crisis between Sweden and Israel.

[Salabra]

Salabra:
Both your attack on Zionism and the the casual conducting of racist stereotypes is to be applauded - I agree entirely.

Why, thank you, old chap — jolly good show and all that!


But I hope that your objections to Hamas (which, I trust, are not based on similarly cheap, constructed images of that movement or of political Islam in general...)

As I, and others, have said elsewhere, “political islam” is a thoroughly reactionary ideology. Do you also support “political catholicism”? Oh yes, that’s right, in Poland you supported Solidarność, the only trade union beloved of the Vatican and Western imperialism.

How many times must I say that I will have no truck with a movement that says “you can march ... at the back of the procession ... behind the beardies ... and dressed in a black tent with an eyeslit”?


...does not also seek to deny that organisation the right to resist the full brutalities of the Zionist state and its military might...

I have said several times that I would defend the Palestinians militarily — I will fight the “politics” of their clerical-nationalist (mis)leaders as long as I have breath.

[luchtoibre]

All of this is top-news in Sweden right now.

It looks like it has developed into a diplomatic crisis between Sweden and Israel.
yes...
and it's not new news in the arab 3rd world either....

[luchtoibre]

PFLP demands investigation into allegations of organ theft by occupation soldiers

http://www.pflp.ps/english/files/images/180px_Logo_fplp.jpg (http://www.pflp.ps/english/?q=node/745)

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine called on Saturday, August 22, 2009 for an immediate, serious investigation into reports alleging that Zionist occupation forces stole organs from young Palestinians they killed in the West Bank and Gaza.

These reports, published in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, quoted Palestinians who recalled young men who had been seized by Zionist forces and killed in custody, and their bodies being returned missing organs, as well as that the bodies of young Palestinians killed in clashes were taken by the occupation forces and buried without being returned to their families.

The PFLP said in its statement that these reports should be taken seriously by international human rights organizations, and fully investigated. Crimes and abuses by the occupation forces have been repeatedly reported and yet the occupation army has been able to commit crime after crime without punishment or accountability, despite vast amounts of evidence of occupation crimes. In addition, the statement noted that similar issues have been raised time and time again since the 1980s, and that there have been repeated reports of organ theft and improper experimentation on Palestinians killed by the occupation forces. In Gaza in the 1980s, soldiers were said to have stolen organs from children taken to Israeli hospitals, where they died.

In addition, numerous Israelis have been indicated in Europe and the United States to be involved in international organ-trading networks, including sales of human organs and money laundering.

The Front commended Donald Bostrom, the reporter from Aftonbladet, and all efforts being made by individuals and institutions around the world in order to bring the occupation forces to justice for their crimes against our people, as well as in the struggle to build global solidarity in order to force the occupier to stop its crimes and racist practices and recognize the national rights of the Palestinian people.

The party praised the work of correspondent Donald Boström and all those who facilitated his reporting. The PFLP reiterated its call for the need to bring Israeli soldiers to justice for their actions.


http://www.pflp.ps/english/?q=pflp-demands-investigation-allegations-organ-theft

[9]

PFLP demands investigation into allegations of organ theft by occupation soldiers

http://www.pflp.ps/english/files/images/180px_Logo_fplp.jpg (http://www.pflp.ps/english/?q=node/745)

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine called on Saturday, August 22, 2009 for an immediate, serious investigation into reports alleging that Zionist occupation forces stole organs from young Palestinians they killed in the West Bank and Gaza.

These reports, published in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, quoted Palestinians who recalled young men who had been seized by Zionist forces and killed in custody, and their bodies being returned missing organs, as well as that the bodies of young Palestinians killed in clashes were taken by the occupation forces and buried without being returned to their families.

The PFLP said in its statement that these reports should be taken seriously by international human rights organizations, and fully investigated. Crimes and abuses by the occupation forces have been repeatedly reported and yet the occupation army has been able to commit crime after crime without punishment or accountability, despite vast amounts of evidence of occupation crimes. In addition, the statement noted that similar issues have been raised time and time again since the 1980s, and that there have been repeated reports of organ theft and improper experimentation on Palestinians killed by the occupation forces. In Gaza in the 1980s, soldiers were said to have stolen organs from children taken to Israeli hospitals, where they died.

In addition, numerous Israelis have been indicated in Europe and the United States to be involved in international organ-trading networks, including sales of human organs and money laundering.

The Front commended Donald Bostrom, the reporter from Aftonbladet, and all efforts being made by individuals and institutions around the world in order to bring the occupation forces to justice for their crimes against our people, as well as in the struggle to build global solidarity in order to force the occupier to stop its crimes and racist practices and recognize the national rights of the Palestinian people.

The party praised the work of correspondent Donald Boström and all those who facilitated his reporting. The PFLP reiterated its call for the need to bring Israeli soldiers to justice for their actions.


http://www.pflp.ps/english/?q=pflp-demands-investigation-allegations-organ-theft

I would like to know if there is any evidence for the claims made, though. If the only thing out there is a bunch of unsubstantiated claims without any documentation or hard evidence to back them up, it is still just hearsay.
And if, in the end, it turns out to indeed be just another blood libel myth, the left is going to lose a whole fucking lot of credibility.

[Salabra]

And if, in the end, it turns out to indeed be just another blood libel myth, the left is going to lose a whole fucking lot of credibility.

In a sense, this is irrelevant — he left has never had and never will have any credibility among rusted-on capitalists, or in the capitalist media.

But you’re right — the masses of people (whether they be nominally christians, jews, muslims, or galaxian orthodox, or whether they hold no religious affiliation at all) will judge our credibility by the way we treat these accusations. If we gullibly accept and echo such back-alley gossip, they will revile us as stooges to reactionary clerical mediaevalists — if we stand up and loudly say that this slander is BULLSHIT, more appropriate for a Dark-Age vellum manuscript that for a “liberal” paper in an advanced social democracy, while at the same time committing ourselves to the physical defence of the Palestinian people, we will gain their respect.

Honest leftists will attempt to unite the proletariat of all nations around their class interests (C’mon people, this is Marxism 101 — remember “Workers of All Nations, Unite”?). This attempt to weld the muslim masses to their own kings, sheikhs and mullahs is a contemptible bourgeois-nationalist ploy and will result in betrayal of the proletariat of the Middle East.

[Dimentio]

Unconfirmed, but still... I think I just *gulp* threw up a little bit in my mouth...

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1108384.html

Top Sweden newspaper says IDF kills Palestinians for their organs http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/images/0.gif
By Morten Berthelsen and Barak Ravid ([email protected]), Haaretz Correspondent
A leading Swedish newspaper reported this week that Israeli soldiers are abducting Palestinians in order to steal their organs, a claim that prompted furious condemnation and accusations of anti-Semitic blood libel from a rival publication.

"They plunder the organs of our sons," read the headline in Sweden's largest daily newspaper, the left-leaning Aftonbladet, which devoted a double spread in its cultural section to the article.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/images/0.gif

(Click here (http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab) for the original article in Swedish)


It was not a claim by the newspaper, technically speaking.

It was rather a vague suggestion by a reporter who have lived amongst Palestinian families. In Sweden, a disproportional huge part of the public debate is honoured to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where the right predictably supports Israel and the left equally predictably supports the Palestinians.

Now, hilarity has ensued as Israel's crazy right-wing government has attacked the moderate right-wing government of Sweden over that the Swedish government could not stand by the excuse(!) for the newspaper article offered by Sweden's ambassador in Israel.

In Sweden, the political right - now championed by the blogger Dick Erixon - now demands that the government offer an apology to Israel, while the left demands that freedom of expression is kept. Therefore, the left - according to the right - are antisemites. Three years ago, with the Muhammed cartoon crisis, the roles were reversed.

Lars Vilks put it best when he said that it was not really about freedom of expression, but rather positioning between the right and the left.

[9]

In a sense, this is irrelevant — he left has never had and never will have any credibility among rusted-on capitalists, or in the capitalist media.
Perhaps I should have been clearer, but when I said "credibility", I certainly did not mean "credibility among capitalists", as such a thing is obviously a contradiction in terms with regard to the revolutionary left.

[Zoonic]

Sweden is a society with a weak identity and swedish people who have political views usually don't know why they have them. The nation is spoiled with peace and prosperity for 200 years and politics become more of a fashion thing and a way of finding a group identity. Sweden is detached from reality and lack serious internal challenges, this is also why foreign politics takes such an extreme twist. A rather insignificant country with 9 million citizens, geographically located at the edge of the civilized world and physically cut off from the rest of Europe. Foreign politics and interfering with the domestic politics of other nations is a way for Sweden to fill the void of not having enough to deal with at home.

The detachment from a broader reality provides no challenge to help swedish individuals develop true ideological needs. So instead they identify with whoever at the time seems most likely to help sustain their glass bubble where no real conflict can exist. Sweden wants to avoid real conflict in the real world at all costs, but needs to keep the artificial excuse for ideological substance and identity and does so by lecturing other nations (most of them, aside from Israel much more prominent in real world politics than Sweden will ever be) such as Italy, the US, Israel and China.

Nothing which comes out of a swedish newspaper or from a swedish politician should be taken too seriously. It is after all a nation of spoiled people out of touch with reality.

[luchtoibre]

PFLP calls on Italian and Swedish supporters of Palestine to reject Zionist attempts at intimidation

http://www.pflp.ps/english/files/images/zionism-racism.jpg (http://www.pflp.ps/english/?q=node/1633)
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine called upon friends and supporters of Palestine in Italy, Sweden, and throughout Europe and the world to reject Zionist attempts to trample freedom of speech and the press and suppress the movement in support of Palestine. Responding to the statements of Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini, a PFLP spokesperson said that it is urgent that European countries and people internationally isolate Israel and fully investigate its abuses.

The PFLP spokesperson harshly condemned the intervention of Frattini, who said that "there are limits to freedom of the press" and has pressed for expanded and increased economic and political relations between Israel and Europe. Israel has attempted to demand that the government of Sweden condemn an article by Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom published in the newspaper Aftonbladet that discusses Palestinians' reports of organ theft from the bodies of Palestinians killed by the Israeli occupation forces.

Rather than refute the truth of Bostrom's article, the PFLP spokesperson said, the Zionist regime has attempted to muddy the waters and create a chilling precedent that could silence journalists and activists for Palestinian human rights in Sweden and throughout Europe. The PFLP spokesperson said further that it is utterly inappropriate for a government to "condemn" an article published in a free press, and demanded that the Zionist movement cease its seemingly endless attempts to silence exposure of its repeated violation of Palestinian human and national rights.

Furthermore the PFLP spokesperson called upon supporters of Palestine in Italy and throughout Europe to demand Frattini's resignation, saying that Israel and all of its products, academic and cultural institutions and corporations should be boycotted and internationally isolated, and the Zionist state subject to sanctions, rather than increasing relations with Israel while it continues its numerous and brutal violations of Palestinian human rights.

The PFLP spokesperson said that the Zionist occupation state is illegitimate and built entirely as a racist project upon the dispossession of Palestinians and the theft of Palestinian land, and that it currently continues its military occupation, mass imprisonment of Palestinians, construction of settlements on stolen land, Zionization of Jerusalem, systematic repression of Palestinians in occupied Palestine 1948, denial of over 7 million Palestinian refugees' right to return, the siege and ongoing aggression against our people in Gaza, as well as coming only months after the devastating massacres committed against Palestinians in Gaza that raised shock and horror around the world at the occupation state.

Furthermore, the PFLP spokesperson said, any attempt to divert attention from Israeli crimes or label investigation of them as "anti-Semitism" is nothing more than an attempt to distract from the real issue - the crimes of the occupation state, for which it must be held accountable. The PFLP spokesperson said that the European Union should be taking up the question of sanctions and isolation of Israel, not addressing the concerns of the occupier.

The PFLP spokesperson went on to say that Frattini's demand that Sweden "prove its stance against anti-Semitism" is absurd and once again, is working in concert with the occupying force to divert attention from the racist crimes of Zionism being committed daily. Opposition to the racist criminal state of Israel, the spokesperson said, has nothing to do with Jews, Judaism, or bias or hatred against them; on the contrary, the spokesperson said, it is Israel itself that is the racist state, based on Zionism, a racist ideology that supports the theft of Palestinian and Arab land and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and Arabs in order to create a so-called "Jewish state" on Palestinian Arab land!

The PFLP spokesperson emphasized that the Front is calling upon all friends of Palestine in Italy, Sweden and throughout Europe to reject Zionist demands to silence journalists and avoid investigation of Israeli crimes and to reject utterly all politicians who attempt to justify these crimes. Furthermore, it called upon the European Union to instead apply full boycott and sanctions to Israel and its products and institutions because of its racist nature and its violations of Palestinian human and national rights.

The PFLP spokesperson concluded by expressing its solidarity with the Swedish journalist, Donald Bostrom, the newspaper Aftonbladet, and all forces and institutions in the world pressing for full investigation, exposure and prosecution for the war crimes of the Zionist state.

http://www.pflp.ps/english/?q=node/1735

[Robocommie]

What are you on about? The West did some opportunistic organ harvesting in Yugoslavia. I don't see what is so unbelievable about this.

Now attack me for anti-Semitism.

In fact, I do believe that it's confirmed that South African police stole organs from the bodies of slain black men during the height of apartheid.

The black market organ industry is a real thing, and the organs have to be coming from somewhere.

[luchtoibre]

Accountability and the organ theft controversy
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 5 September 2009

The hyperventilating by Israel's leaders over a story published in a Swedish newspaper last month 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 unauthorized 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.



http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10753.shtml

I have no idea whether the story is true. Like most journalists working in Israel and Palestine, I have heard such rumors 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 criticized for the flimsy evidence he produced in support of his inflammatory story. Certainly there is much to criticize 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 unauthorized 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.

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.

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, 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.

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."

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 family 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 authorization. Following a plea bargain with the state, the attorney general decided not to press criminal charges and Hiss was given only a reprimand. 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 authorization 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, 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. 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 criticized, 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 (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745327540/theelectronic-20) (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1848130317/theelectronic-20) (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net (http://www.jkcook.net/).

[Salabra]

Accountability and the organ theft controversy
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 5 September 2009
...
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 (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745327540/theelectronic-20) (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1848130317/theelectronic-20) (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net (http://www.jkcook.net/).


You know this reminds me of nothing more than the White poster dating from the Russian Civil War portraying Trotsky as a stereotypical “big-nosed jew with heavy eyelids” sitting on a pile of skulls, or Hitler’s insistence that the fact that jewish newspapers abrogated “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” meant that they must be true.

It is interesting that, since the original story seems to have fallen flat, the reporter has shifted ground. The original Aftonbladet accusation was that the IDF was kidnapping young Palestinian men, killing them and stealing their organs for the illegal transplant trade. Evidence for this was obviously rather thin on the ground, so the author changed tack and decided to focus instead on organs harvested from already dead bodies after they had already reached the morgue. He dug around and found an example of an actual criminal — Dr Yehuda Hiss, head of Israel’s L. Greenberg Institute of Forensic Medicine — and attempted to link his case to the original report. OK, let’s get that out of the way first.

There was a long history of allegations, substantiated by the Israeli government, of Hiss and his lab taking organs from dead bodies without permission and using them for research or selling them to medical schools. Hiss was never charged with any crime, but in 2004 he was forced to step down from running the state morgue, following years of complaints. An Israeli Health Ministry investigation (in 2001) found no evidence that Hiss targeted Palestinians — rather, he seemed to view every body that ended up in his morgue, whether Israeli or Palestinian, as fair game for organ harvesting. The families of dead Israeli soldiers were among those who complained about Hiss’s conduct.

The Aftonbladet story was prompted by the arrest of suspected black-market kidney broker Levy Izhak Rosenbaum in New Jersey in July. Journalist Donald Boström claims to have learned of organ-harvesting in Israel in 1992, during the period in which Hiss served as chief pathologist. According to the criminal complaint against Rosenbaum, the accused organ broker told an undercover FBI agent that he’d been dealing in kidney transplants since about 1999. But timeline aside, the alleged link doesn’t make practical sense. First of all, by the time dead bodies get to the morgue, it’s much too late to transplant their organs into other people. Second, Rosenbaum is alleged to have arranged, for a fee, kidney transplants from live “donors” who travelled to the US from Israel for the operations — there’s no evidence that he ever dealt with organs removed post mortem.

So what we actually have is shocking enough — a story of the trade in organs taken from dead bodies without the consent of patients or their families. What we do not have is the original Aftonbladet story — which only exists in the perfervid imaginations of petty-bourgeois “leftists,” for whom the Palestinians all wear White Hats, in contrast to the Black-Hatted EEEEEEEVIL Israelis.

Let me say once again that Israel is a mini-imperialist state, which has committed criminal acts against the Palestinian people, attempting to destroy them both by slow strangulation and by quick murder. It can and should be attacked for its policies and its actions, its arrogant settler superiority and racism, but not by endorsing frankly ghoulish medieval fantasies which reveal more about the psychopathology of their originators and transmitters than they do about their subjects.

It may be all very well for bourgeois liberal journalists like Jonathon Cook to wax eloquent about “national liberation” and get carried away with the romanticism of “doe-eyed maidens in the souk (market), veiled from head to foot.” It is positively infantile for so-called “socialists” to tail after every “liberation” movement just because that movement claims to be “anti-imperialist” and “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” — it becomes suicidal when the “movement” they are courting is composed of clerical-reactionaries who think that society should be run in accordance with the rather idiosyncratic and primitivist “eternally valid ‘Laws’” promulgated by their invisible friend rather than any ideas of freedom, justice, equality or the historic interests of the proletariat.

What’s next? The Afghan mujahadin (and their successors, the Taliban) and the Polish “union” Solidarność as “revolutionary” organizations? Oh wait, some of you already hold that position!

PS: It’s funny — if this story didn’t involve “Evil Overlords” and “Martyrs of the Oppressed” we could easily torpedo it by referring the gullible to http://www.snopes.com/horrors/robbery/kidney.asp , of which it is an obvious variant.

[luchtoibre]

You know this reminds me of nothing more than the White poster dating from the Russian Civil War portraying Trotsky as a stereotypical “big-nosed jew with heavy eyelids” sitting on a pile of skulls, or Hitler’s insistence that the fact that jewish newspapers abrogated “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” meant that they must be true.

It is interesting that, since the original story seems to have fallen flat, the reporter has shifted ground. The original Aftonbladet accusation was that the IDF was kidnapping young Palestinian men, killing them and stealing their organs for the illegal transplant trade. Evidence for this was obviously rather thin on the ground, so the author changed tack and decided to focus instead on organs harvested from already dead bodies after they had already reached the morgue. He dug around and found an example of an actual criminal — Dr Yehuda Hiss, head of Israel’s L. Greenberg Institute of Forensic Medicine — and attempted to link his case to the original report. OK, let’s get that out of the way first.

There was a long history of allegations, substantiated by the Israeli government, of Hiss and his lab taking organs from dead bodies without permission and using them for research or selling them to medical schools. Hiss was never charged with any crime, but in 2004 he was forced to step down from running the state morgue, following years of complaints. An Israeli Health Ministry investigation (in 2001) found no evidence that Hiss targeted Palestinians — rather, he seemed to view every body that ended up in his morgue, whether Israeli or Palestinian, as fair game for organ harvesting. The families of dead Israeli soldiers were among those who complained about Hiss’s conduct.

The Aftonbladet story was prompted by the arrest of suspected black-market kidney broker Levy Izhak Rosenbaum in New Jersey in July. Journalist Donald Boström claims to have learned of organ-harvesting in Israel in 1992, during the period in which Hiss served as chief pathologist. According to the criminal complaint against Rosenbaum, the accused organ broker told an undercover FBI agent that he’d been dealing in kidney transplants since about 1999. But timeline aside, the alleged link doesn’t make practical sense. First of all, by the time dead bodies get to the morgue, it’s much too late to transplant their organs into other people. Second, Rosenbaum is alleged to have arranged, for a fee, kidney transplants from live “donors” who travelled to the US from Israel for the operations — there’s no evidence that he ever dealt with organs removed post mortem.

So what we actually have is shocking enough — a story of the trade in organs taken from dead bodies without the consent of patients or their families. What we do not have is the original Aftonbladet story — which only exists in the perfervid imaginations of petty-bourgeois “leftists,” for whom the Palestinians all wear White Hats, in contrast to the Black-Hatted EEEEEEEVIL Israelis.

Let me say once again that Israel is a mini-imperialist state, which has committed criminal acts against the Palestinian people, attempting to destroy them both by slow strangulation and by quick murder. It can and should be attacked for its policies and its actions, its arrogant settler superiority and racism, but not by endorsing frankly ghoulish medieval fantasies which reveal more about the psychopathology of their originators and transmitters than they do about their subjects.

It may be all very well for bourgeois liberal journalists like Jonathon Cook to wax eloquent about “national liberation” and get carried away with the romanticism of “doe-eyed maidens in the souk (market), veiled from head to foot.” It is positively infantile for so-called “socialists” to tail after every “liberation” movement just because that movement claims to be “anti-imperialist” and “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” — it becomes suicidal when the “movement” they are courting is composed of clerical-reactionaries who think that society should be run in accordance with the rather idiosyncratic and primitivist “eternally valid ‘Laws’” promulgated by their invisible friend rather than any ideas of freedom, justice, equality or the historic interests of the proletariat.

What’s next? The Afghan mujahadin (and their successors, the Taliban) and the Polish “union” Solidarność as “revolutionary” organizations? Oh wait, some of you already hold that position!

PS: It’s funny — if this story didn’t involve “Evil Overlords” and “Martyrs of the Oppressed” we could easily torpedo it by referring the gullible to http://www.snopes.com/horrors/robbery/kidney.asp , of which it is an obvious variant.
" ....What we do not have is the original Aftonbladet story — which only exists in the perfervid imaginations of petty-bourgeois “leftists,” for whom the Palestinians all wear White Hats, in contrast to the Black-Hatted EEEEEEEVIL Israelis."



what makes you say that?

[Yehuda Stern]

The article was never debunked: it was just poorly sourced. There's a lot of evidence showing that something fishy was going on, but unfortunately the reporter wasn't careful with the way he wrote the article and thus it ends up discrediting those who try to expose Israel's crimes.

[Salabra]

what makes you say that?

Because it is a different story! Harvesting organs from dead bodies without the consent of the individual concerned (or their relatives) is unquestionably an abhorrent crime, but not one confined to Israel or “the jews” — and is a far cry from kidnapping and killing live individuals for body parts.

Rather than whipping ourselves into a frenzy over jewish vampires, this is the sort of thing we should be worrying about

An Army of Extremists
How some military rabbis are trying to radicalize Israeli soldiers.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, March 23, 2009, at 4:32 PM ET

Recent reports of atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers in the course of the intervention in Gaza have described the incitement of conscripts and reservists by military rabbis who characterized the battle as a holy war for the expulsion of non-Jews from Jewish land. The secular Israeli academic Dany Zamir, who first brought the testimony of shocked Israeli soldiers to light, has been quoted as if the influence of such extremist clerical teachings was something new. This is not the case.

I remember being in Israel in 1986 when the chief army “chaplain” in the occupied territories, Rabbi Shmuel Derlich, issued his troops a 1,000-word pastoral letter enjoining them to apply the biblical commandment to exterminate the Amalekites as “the enemies of Israel.”

Nobody has recently encountered any Amalekites, so the chief educational officer of the Israeli Defence Forces asked Rabbi Derlich whether he would care to define his terms and say whom he meant. Rather evasively — if rather alarmingly — the man of God replied, “Germans.” There are no Germans in Judaea and Samaria or, indeed, in the Old Testament, so the rabbi’s exhortation to slay all Germans as well as quite probably all Palestinians was referred to the Judge Advocate General’s Office. Forty military rabbis publicly came to Derlich’s support, and the rather spineless conclusion of the JAG was that he had committed no legal offense but should perhaps refrain in the future from making political statements on the army’s behalf.

The problem here is precisely that the rabbi was not making a “political” statement. Rather, he was doing his religious duty in reminding his readers what the Torah actually says. It’s not at all uncommon in Israel to read discussions, featuring military rabbis, of quite how to interpret the following holy order from Moses, in the Book of Numbers, Chapter 31, Verses 13-18, as quoted from my 1985 translation by the Jewish Publication Society. The Israelites have just done a fairly pitiless job on the Midianites, slaughtering all of the adult males. But, says their stern commander-in-chief, they have still failed him:
Moses, Eleazer the priest, and all the chieftains of the community came out to meet them outside the camp. Moses became angry with the commanders of the army, the officers of thousands and the officers of hundreds, who had come back from the military campaign. Moses said to them, “You have spared every female! Yet they are the very ones who, at the bidding of Balaam, induced the Israelites to trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, so that the Lord’s community was struck by the plague. Now, therefore, slay every male among the children, and slay also every young woman who has known a man carnally; but spare every young woman who has not had carnal relations with a man.”
Moses and Eleazar the priest go on to issue some complex instructions about the ritual cleansings that must be practiced after this exhausting massacre has been completed.

Now, it’s common to hear people say, when this infamous passage and others like it come up, that it’s not intended to be “taken literally.” One also often hears the excuse that some wicked things are done “in the name of” religion, as if the wicked things were somehow the result of a misinterpretation. But the nationalist rabbis who prepare Israeli soldiers for their mission seem to think that this book might be the word of God, in which case the only misinterpretation would be the failure to take it literally. (I hate to break it to you, but the people who think that God’s will is revealed in scripture are known as “religious.” Those who do not think so must try to find another name for themselves.)

Possibly you remember Dr. Baruch Goldstein (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/25/newsid_4167000/4167929.stm), the man who in February 1994 unslung his weapon and killed more than two dozen worshippers at the mosque in Hebron. He had been a physician in the Israeli army and had first attracted attention by saying that he would refuse to treat non-Jews on the Sabbath. Now read Ethan Bronner’s report (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/weekinreview/22BRONNER.html) in the March 22 New York Times about the preachments of the Israeli army’s latest chief rabbi, a West Bank settler named Avichai Rontzski who also holds the rank of brigadier general. He has “said that the main reason for a Jewish doctor to treat a non-Jew on the Sabbath … is to avoid exposing Diaspora Jews to hatred.” Those of us who follow these things recognize that statement as one of the leading indicators of a truly determined racist and fundamentalist. Yet it comes not this time in the garb of a homicidal lone-wolf nut bag but in the full uniform and accoutrement of a general and a high priest: Moses and Eleazar combined. The latest news, according to Bronner, is that the Israeli Defence Ministry has felt compelled to reprimand Rontzski for “a rabbinic edict against showing the enemy mercy” that was distributed in booklet form to men and women in uniform (see Numbers 31:13-18, above).

Peering over the horrible pile of Palestinian civilian casualties that has immediately resulted, it’s fairly easy to see where this is going in the medium-to-longer term. The zealot settlers and their clerical accomplices are establishing an army within the army so that one day, if it is ever decided to disband or evacuate the colonial settlements, there will be enough officers and soldiers, stiffened by enough rabbis and enough extremist sermons, to refuse to obey the order. Torah verses will also be found that make it permissible to murder secular Jews as well as Arabs. The dress rehearsals for this have already taken place, with the religious excuses given for Baruch Goldstein’s rampage and the Talmudic evasions concerning the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Once considered highly extreme, such biblical exegeses are moving ever closer to the mainstream. It’s high time the United States cut off any financial support for Israel that can be used even indirectly for settler activity, not just because such colonization constitutes a theft of another people’s land but also because our Constitution absolutely forbids us to spend public money on the establishment of any religion.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2214440/
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

And yes, that last sentence is particularly hypocritical — especially in the light of the fanatical attempt by certain officers in the US military (e.g., Air Force general Boykin) to impose fundamentalist christianity on their troops.

What all these stories say to me is that it is high time the human race grew up, and flushed the dangerous poison of religion down the S-bend of history where it belongs.

[luchtoibre]

You know this reminds me of nothing more than the White poster dating from the Russian Civil War portraying Trotsky as a stereotypical “big-nosed jew with heavy eyelids” sitting on a pile of skulls, or Hitler’s insistence that the fact that jewish newspapers abrogated “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” meant that they must be true.


bizarre...!what did that have to do with the article by j.cook?


petty-bourgeois “leftist,”"" for whom the Palestinians all wear White Hats, in contrast to the Black-Hatted EEEEEEEVIL Israelis.why did you say that?



Let me say once again that Israel is a mini-imperialist state, which has committed criminal acts against the Palestinian people, attempting to destroy them both by slow strangulation and by quick murder. It can and should be attacked for its policies and its actions,thanks for your support
but not by endorsing frankly ghoulish medieval fantasies which reveal more about the psychopathology of their originators and transmitters than they do about their subjects.youre off on one...


It may be all very well for bourgeois liberal journalists like Jonathon Cook to wax eloquent about “national liberation” and get carried away with the romanticism of “doe-eyed maidens in the souk (market), veiled from head to foot.” It is positively infantile for so-called “socialists” to tail after every “liberation” movement just because that movement claims to be “anti-imperialist” and “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” — it becomes suicidal when the “movement” they are courting is composed of clerical-reactionaries who think that society should be run in accordance with the rather idiosyncratic and primitivist “eternally valid ‘Laws’” promulgated by their invisible friend rather than any ideas of freedom, justice, equality or the historic interests of the proletariat.
What’s next? The Afghan mujahadin (and their successors, the Taliban) and the Polish “union” Solidarność as “revolutionary” organizations? Oh wait, some of you already hold that position!

.what is the purpose of that rant.?
and don't you support palestine in this post?


Because it is a different story! Harvesting organs from dead bodies without the consent of the individual concerned (or their relatives) is unquestionably an abhorrent crime, but not one confined to Israel or “the jews” — and is a far cry from kidnapping and killing live individuals for body parts.

Rather than whipping ourselves into a frenzy over jewish vampires, this is the sort of thing we should be worrying aboutwhat are you about?do you think some on on this thread /forum maybe jews,may be arabs,palestinians ..or do you think that we are all "middle class bourgeoise leftists",to quote you.
you took more time slating "leftists " ,than understanding that this isn't just about the article in a swedish tabloid.

[Salabra]

bizarre...!

Bizarre? There are two things that *I* find bizarre.

The first is the fact that you’ve almost completely ignored my last post and chosen to comment on the one before. To me, this implies that you can’t (or don’t want to) consider the post about crazy rabbis advocating ethnic cleansing, preferring to salivate — for reasons on which I won’t speculate — over “jewish vampires harvesting organs from live Palestinians.”

The second is the petty-bourgeois romanticism of some who call themselves Marxists, but lionize nationalist movements (and, yes, I’ve read your Profile and noted your Irish Republican leanings), particularly movements that buttress themselves on the reactionary pillar of religion.


you took more time slating "leftists " ,than understanding that this isn't just about the article in a swedish tabloid.

I “spend … time slating such ‘leftists’” because they are not leftists — they are bourgeois liberals, about as ‘left’ as Brian Cowen’s right eyeball.

This is Marxism for Beginners — if you’re going to call yourself a Marxist, you should at least be able to pretend to be an internationalist, and pay lip service to militant atheism (Remember Workers of All Countries Unite from the Communist Manifesto, and Away with all your superstitions and No saviour from on high delivers from The Internationale), not trail after clerical-nationalist medieavalism. You take a role in nationalist and other class-collaborationist movements, but only to split them along class lines, and you make your position clear from the first moment of your involvement, not after you’ve created “a nation once again” — this is called “telling the truth.” You don’t coddle ‘the oppressed’ by telling them that every aspect of their culture is ‘progressive’ and ‘revolutionary.’ You don’t applaud wildly when apologists for such ‘alliances of the oppressed’ try to tell you that “going out to bars to mingle with men to whom you are not related is not part of our culture.” You don’t wade about in murky waters like ‘islamic socialism,’ ‘christian socialism,’ ‘jewish socialism,’ or even ‘galaxian orthodox socialism.’ And you don’t give credence to urban legends (I refer you once again to http://www.snopes.com/horrors/robbery/kidney.asp ), simply because you are desperate to paint ‘the oppressors’ as ‘evil.’


and don't you support palestine in this post?

Depends on what you mean.


Do I support/would I defend (sorry, Devrim) the Palestinian people from being killed by the IDF and Zionist settlers? Definitely.
Do I support social services for Palestinians being provided by religious organizations like HAMAS? Of course.
Do I support (as a sort of quid-pro-quo for the social services) HAMAS imposing hijab on all women who go out in public, as they did right from the early days of the intifada, when they broke into classrooms to demand that girls wear hijab, or when they throw stones at unveiled women? No.
Do I support the explanation touted by the ‘islamic revolutionaries’ of HAMAS — and parroted by pseudo-leftists — that these stifling yards of black cloth (or even a pretty multicoloured headscarf), meant to symbolize female ‘modesty’ — and subservience — are a symbol of ‘anti-imperialist struggle’? *Snorts derisively*!
Do I support the social segregation of women, the estimation of shari’a that women are only worth half as much as men, or the persecution of women who ‘shame’ their families by having sex outside marriage, defying arranged marriages or other transgressions of islamic law? You must be bloody joking, mate!
And finally, do I support the publication in the ‘left-wing’ Aftonbladet in 2009 of a story that would seem more at home in the Nazi Der Stürmer in 1939 — especially when the journalist’s most recent informants have apparently reneged on the story? If I did, I’d be betraying not only the Palestinians, but my own intelligence and humanity as well.

[luchtoibre]

pointless replying to that....yawn

[revolt4thewin]

Yet another fantastic example of ultimate greed in the modern age.

[freepalestine]

so much for 1 or 2 leftwingzionist apologists on this thread.