Israel admits to organ harvesting

That is really bad !     Should this be flagged as news wanted ?

I have looked at almost every Israeli news source, left, right and middle, and have not found one as of this minute reporting anything about this issue. I will continue. The only thing I have read is a report in some left-wing web site but it only stated that it took place over 10 years ago without any permission of government or army. A rogue person at the Kabir forensic department. I will continue to monitor the news here.

"......from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives."

so it was non-discriminatory harvesting, correct?

Sick as that is, it is hardly as the Swedish newspapered alledged.

"...allegation by a Swedish newspaper that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs."

First, I saw this story:

Palestinian officials accuse Israel of organ harvesting www.chinaview.cn 2009-12-20 20:36:32   Print

    RAMALLAH, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian officials on Sunday accused Israel of harvesting organs from Palestinians killed by the Israeli army years ago.

    Fathi Abu Mughli, the health minister, said that Israeli doctors "have taken parts from dead bodies, including corneas, bones and skin without having permission from the Palestinian families."

    In a statement sent to the media, Abu Mughli called on the Israeli government to respond to reports on organ harvesting, describing the act as "disgraceful work." He also called for an immediate investigation.

This may be classified as HATE PORN.

Weekend Edition
August 28-30, 2009

By ALISON WEIR

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

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

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

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

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

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

Below are a few examples of previous reports on this topic.

This just in from the JTA. Jewish Telegraph Service:

Report: Israel admits to harvesting organs

December 21, 2009

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Israel admitted to harvesting organs from dead bodies in the 1990s.

The admission came after the release of a 2000 interview with Dr. Yehuda Hiss, who was the head of Israel's L. Greenberg Forensic Institute in Abu Kabir, The Associated Press reported.

Hiss told an American academic in the interview, parts of which were broadcast on Israel's Channel 2 over the weekend, that the institute used corneas from bodies, including Israeli soldiers, Palestinians and foreign workers. Channel 2's report said that corneas, heart valves, skin and bones were used from the corpses without families' permission. 

The scholar released the interview following a report in a Swedish newspaper that Israel was harvesting the organs of Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers, an accusation that Israeli officials have denied, AP reported.

The Israel Defense Forces confirmed to Channel 2 that the organs were used, but stressed that the practice stopped a decade ago.

Ten years ago, Israel harvested organs from war victims to enhance the quality of the living. Done without permission of victims’ families, this was an immoral practice long since stopped.

Here is the latest

Israel Reiterates Hard Line on Illegal Organ Trafficking Following Revelations of Decade-old Case

Experts available for interviews

In response to an Associated Press report that an Israeli forensics specialist a decade ago was removing organs from deceased Israeli soldiers and civilians as well as Palestinians without their families’ permission, the Israeli Ministry of Health on Monday (Dec. 21) issued a statement underscoring that it has made such practices illegal.[1]

The ministry said that the Segelson Commission, established in 2001, investigated the matter and forbade organ removal from deceased persons without family permission. This practice has been discontinued and has not occurred since the issue came to light, officials said.[2]

Organs from deceased persons were removed at the Abu Kabir forensic institute to treat other patients; they were not sold or trafficked.[3]

Relatives of Israeli soldiers and civilians as well as Palestinian families made formal complaints against Abu Kabir in 2004. The bodies were those of Israelis and Palestinians who had died due to a variety of reasons such as disease, accidents and through Israeli-Palestinian violence.[4] The doctor responsible for the removal of organs at the institute was dismissed from his position as director.[5]
A number of organ trafficking cases have arisen in Israel in recent years, prompting the government to tighten legislation on the issue, break up organ trafficking rings and prosecute those involved both directly and indirectly.

“This reprinting of old information must not be allowed to become the occasion for mischief, blasphemous lies or distortions,” Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Chairman Alan Solow and Executive Vice Chairman Malcolm Hoenlein said in a statement released Monday. Media interviews surrounding the reports “provided no evidence to indicate that any Palestinian was killed to ‘harvest organs.’ Such accusations can inflame the region, incite violence and undermine the chances of peace.”

In March 2008, the Knesset (Israeli parliament) passed the Organ Donation Law, forbidding trafficking and selling organs whether in Israel or outside of the country. The law also forbids anyone from brokering such deals or acting in any way as an intermediary for organ sales.[6]

According to the law, “anyone who receives or gives compensation for an organ from a person not his relative, or a broker who gives or receives, or a physician who performs such a transplant will be sentenced to six months in prison or a financial penalty…” The law applies to all cases – whether within Israel or abroad. [7]

"Given that Israel has one of the lowest organ donor consent rates in the Western world, there is and always has been a severe shortage of organ donation in the country," said Robert Berman, founder and director of the Halachic Organ Donor Society. "It is in this context that [the forensic specialist] inappropriately removed body parts from corpses, such as heart valves, in order to save ailing patients, Arabs and Jews alike. Recent Israeli legislation by the Knesset and enforcement by the Ministry of Health has prevented such actions from reoccurring."

“As inappropriate as the specialist's behavior was, there are two important points to note in this story. First, organs were taken from Jews and Palestinian alike. Palestinians were not singled out. Second, no one was murdered for their organs. These body parts were taken from cadavers. Both of these critical points indicate that this sorrowful event does not lend any credibility to the recently published article in Sweden’s Aftonbladet newspaper claiming that Israeli soldiers were killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs.”[17]

Thanks everyone for your comments, and especially Thanks to Tikun for adding to this story and dispelling rumour and innuendo brought on by many.

I am not certain if it matters when this happened. A year ago, Ten years ago or a generation ago, a crime is still a crime and needs to be prosecuted as such.

If any one want to look the other way here and forgive and forget, then please do so unilaterally for all and every country that ever commits such crimes. 

Should a Palestinian, an Arab or a Canadian be fund having committed such crimes or similar once, then all those have to be forgiven equally or condemned equally.

We can not have nor tolerate a International justice with two sets of rules or standards.

A crime remains a crime!

Here is the latest on the issuefrom the Guardian:

The Guardian issued an admittance on Tuesday that it should not have used the headline "Israel admits harvesting Palestinian organs," for a report it published on Monday alleging the harvesting of organs by specialists at the Abu Kabir forensic institute. The UK paper also changed the headline of the piece in its Internet edition to "Doctor admits Israeli pathologists harvested organs without consent," thus averting it from being yet another reported instance of malicious Israeli handling of dead Palestinians, to a somewhat mundane instance of medical malpractice.