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
By Morten Berthelsen and Barak Ravid, 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.


(Click here 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 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.

[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?

[#FF0000]

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

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.

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 | In Featured Articles, Kosovo-Metohija Crisis

Kosovo Albanian Organ Harvesting Atrocities Investigated by the Council of Europe

On Wednesday, June 25, the Council of Europe appointed 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 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 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 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 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 |

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’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.