Israel admits to harvesting organs

[Fire Fly]

You guys remember the Swedish newspaper accusation that Israel harvested Palestinian organs and then Israel hit back by calling them antisemitic? Well, I guess the Israelis are now admitting that it did occur.

Israel admits harvesting Palestinian organs

Israel has admitted that pathologists harvested organs from dead Palestinians, and others without the consent of their families – a practice that it said ended in the 1990s, it emerged at the weekend.

The admission, by the former head of the country's forensic institute, followed a furious row prompted by a Swedish newspaper reporting that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to use their organs – a charge that Israel denied and called "antisemitic".

The revelation, in a television documentary, is likely to generate anger in the Arab and Muslim world and reinforce sinister stereotypes of Israel and its attitude to Palestinians. Iran's state-run Press TV tonight reported the story, illustrated with photographs of dead or badly injured Palestinians.

Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli Arab MP, said the report incriminated the Israeli army.

The story emerged in an interview with Dr Yehuda Hiss, former head of the Abu Kabir forensic institute near Tel Aviv. The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic who released it because of the row between Israel and Sweden over a report in the Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet.

Channel 2 TV reported that in the 1990s, specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives.

The Israeli military confirmed to the programme that the practice took place, but added: "This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer."

Hiss said: "We started to harvest corneas ... whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family."

However, there was no evidence that Israel had killed Palestinians to take their organs, as the Swedish paper reported. Aftonbladet quoted Palestinians as saying young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by the Israeli forces and their bodies returned to their families with missing organs. The interview with Hiss was released by Nancy Sheppard-Hughes, professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley who had conducted a study of Abu Kabir.

She was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that while Palestinians were "by a long shot" not the only ones affected, she felt the interview must be made public, because "the symbolism, you know, of taking skin of the population considered to be the enemy, [is] something, just in terms of its symbolic weight, that has to be reconsidered."

Israel demanded that Sweden condemn the Aftonbladet article, calling it an antisemitic "blood libel". Stockholm refused, saying that to so would violate freedom of speech in the country. The foreign minister then cancelled a visit to Israel, just as Sweden was taking over the EU's rotating presidency.

Hiss was removed from his post in 2004, when some details about organ harvesting were first reported, but he still works at the forensic institute.

Israel's health ministry said all harvesting was now done with permission. "The guidelines at that time were not clear," it said in a statement to Channel 2. "For the last 10 years, Abu Kabir has been working according to ethics and Jewish law."

[Shroom Man 777]

Jesus. Wow. Reality is totally obscene. I mean, I make a habit of imagining the most assholish and shit things possible, but real-life seems to beat me all the time whenever disgusting shit like this makes the news.

Way to go, assholes, make yourselves even more popular to the "anti-Semites". Next thing you know, we'll hear that they're doing medical experiments on prisoners or something. We should really start calling the West Bank and Gaza Strip ghettoes.

EDIT:

I mean, shit, if these assholes like to whine and bitch and compare everything bad people say about them to the Holocaust, then we might as well compare everything bad they do to the goddamn Nazis as well. Fuck them.

[Questor]

I mean, shit, if these assholes like to whine and bitch and compare everything bad people say about them to the Holocaust, then we might as well compare everything bad they do to the goddamn Nazis as well. Fuck them.

This one has direct parallels as well. Mengele was not a nice person, and I'm pretty sure the Mosad was involved in hunting him down.

I've spent the past five minutes trying to put words to my feelings on this, and nothing seems to fit. Suffice it to say that the parallels are becoming more and more disturbing.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Channel 2 TV reported that in the 1990s, specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives.

The Israeli military confirmed to the programme that the practice took place, but added: "This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer."

Hiss said: "We started to harvest corneas ... whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family."

However, there was no evidence that Israel had killed Palestinians to take their organs, as the Swedish paper reported. Aftonbladet quoted Palestinians as saying young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by the Israeli forces and their bodies returned to their families with missing organs. The interview with Hiss was released by Nancy Sheppard-Hughes, professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley who had conducted a study of Abu Kabir.

She was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that while Palestinians were "by a long shot" not the only ones affected, she felt the interview must be made public, because "the symbolism, you know, of taking skin of the population considered to be the enemy, [is] something, just in terms of its symbolic weight, that has to be reconsidered."

Just to clarify from the article.
Not that this isn't morally repugnant, etc'. (Even if I do support organ harvesting from all bodies, but that's just a personal opinion, one that I support for all bodies regardless of their origins, which apparently was the case in the forensics institute in question)

[Darth Yan]

Sweet mother of god.

[Shroom Man 777]

Just to clarify from the article.
Not that this isn't morally repugnant, etc'. (Even if I do support organ harvesting from all bodies, but that's just a personal opinion, one that I support for all bodies regardless of their origins, which apparently was the case in the forensics institute in question)

Well, yeah. But these Israeli guys should really just shut their pieholes whenever they shout "anti-semite!" at anyone who dares criticize them, especially when those criticisms turn out to be actually true and these Israeli guys end up looking like complete asses.

[Thanas]

Barbaric and unworthy of a country that likes to call itself "civilized".

Oh, and also against international law, though of course Israel never cared about that.

[Zixinus]

Wow, I just recall discussing this on another forum. Even though everyone agreed that the accusation was baseless (I'm specifically talking about the Swedish article), I quickly got called an anti-Semite or at least was close to.

Now this. Alright, not as bad as outright organ harvesting, but shit.

[Fire Fly]

In other Israel related news bits, Israel is seeking an additional 1 billion euros in Holocaust reparations from Germany

Israel to seek another 1b euros Holocaust in reparations from Germany

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz will demand between 450 million to 1 billion euros in reparations from Germany on behalf of Jews forced into slave labor during the Holocaust, it emerged on Sunday.

Minister Steinitz will reportedly present German government with the demand on behalf of 30,000 Israeli survivors of forced labor in wartime ghettos, during a joint session scheduled to take place in early 2010 in Berlin.

Israeli officials estimate that according to a ghetto workers act passed by the German parliament in 2002, all of the 30,000 living forced labor survivors are entitled to a retroactive payment of approximately 15,000 euros each.

However, Finance Ministry officials say that according to the German government's calculations, the one-time payment is larger than that estimated by Israel, and reaches a total of 1 billion euros.

In addition to the one-time payment, the survivors are also entitled to a monthly allowance, which adds up to around 100 million euros a year.

In September, Germany's top court dismissed a claim yesterday for the return of land seized by the Nazis from its Jewish owner in 1933.

Jewish businessman Adolf Sommerfeld, who owned nearly 80 percent of a company building a housing estate in the Berlin suburb of Kleinmachnow, was beaten up and shot at by Nazi thugs and fled Germany in 1933, the year the Nazis came to power.

The Nazis later sold the homes to their occupants, who are now the owners. Seizures of property from Jews continued through the 1930s, culminating in the Holocaust.

[Thanas]

^I do not see how the two are related.

[Darth Yan]

trying to distract attention i guess. seems shallow and pathetic.

[Eleas]

However, there was no evidence that Israel had killed Palestinians to take their organs, as the Swedish paper reported. Aftonbladet quoted Palestinians as saying young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by the Israeli forces and their bodies returned to their families with missing organs.

Aftonbladet is a "newspaper" in the same sense that The Sun is. It's a second-rate tabloid rag which due to this debacle was catapulted into notoriety all out of proportion to its importance anywhere else. This has occurred more than once because extremists on both sides of the Israel conflict has such enormous use for what Aftonbladet says when it dips into its most outrageous polemics.

And yet, it's interesting to note that the article was in this case unusual in that it was based on a true story. It might even be relevant to ask oneself if a practise of harvesting the organs of the dead would entail a certain quota, and whether this would mean that there would actually be some degree of informal pressure to bend the rules in order to meet said quota.

While I don't really believe that, it's now become a semi-reasonable question. And that's just fucked up beyond words.

[Tiriol]

^I do not see how the two are related.

I don't think that they are related, but there is some gallows' humor to be found in the fact that while Israeli forces harvested organs from dead Palestinians without their families' permissions and acting in general in a very notoriously bad manner, they still demand compensation for the atrocities committed by the Third Reich. Personally, I'd like to see Germany to refuse to cave in to these demands - the current generations are in no way responsible for deeds their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers committed, why should they have to bear the burden for them?

But yes, they are not, strictly speaking related.

[Thanas]

Isn't it also a religious sacrilege in Islam to violate dead bodies?

[Ritterin Sophia]

^I do not see how the two are related.

Both are about Israel taking advantage of 'their' plight during the Holocaust, one by comparing anyone who disagrees with them to Nazis and the other extortion from the country that originally committed those crimes. If Germany says no, ya'll will be called unsympathetic and unapologetic for the crimes of your forebearers, perhaps even antisemitic.

[Sarevok]

I understand organ harvesting from executed prisoners is approved by the state in China. Is such a thing silently accepted by the policymakers in Israeli government when dealing with dead Palestinians ? Or is this just a case of isolated individuals in the medical profession abusing their authority to do something ghoulish (no pun intended) ?

[loomer]

Isn't it also a religious sacrilege in Islam to violate dead bodies?

Very much so, yes. Its considered sacrilegious to do so even to the bodies of infidels. For the Israelis to do this is going to cause some extra unrest in the region.

[[R_H]]

I understand organ harvesting from executed prisoners is approved by the state in China. Is such a thing silently accepted by the policymakers in Israeli government when dealing with dead Palestinians ? Or is this just a case of isolated individuals in the medical profession abusing their authority to do something ghoulish (no pun intended) ?

From the article:

Channel 2 TV reported that in the 1990s, specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives.

I wonder how many bodies were harvested from, and how many of those were Israelis/Palestinians/Foreigners?

[Coyote]

Well, yeah. But these Israeli guys should really just shut their pieholes whenever they shout "anti-semite!" at anyone who dares criticize them, especially when those criticisms turn out to be actually true and these Israeli guys end up looking like complete asses.

But the Swedes accused the Israelis of purposefully killing Palestinians (and only Palestinians) for the sole purpose of harvesting their organs for Israelis. This, apparantly, did not happen-- the Israelis harvested everyone, including their own, without asking.

Basically, they just "assumed" that anyone who died within the borders had automatically signed an "organ donor card", even if they did not, and they did not seek permission or clarification from the families.

Again, like Squeaker, I'm not sayng this is "okay", it insn't, but the Swedish accusation was not accurate.

[Eleas]

Again, like Squeaker, I'm not sayng this is "okay", it insn't, but the Swedish accusation was not accurate.

And again, referring to this as "the Swedish accusation" is as disingenuous as referring to the O'Rielly Factor as "the American stance." Aftonbladet and Expressen are second-rate tabloids, and only treated as more by the flagrantly stupid.

[Coyote]

OK, I should say "the Swedish tabloid's accusation.

We just assume that any foreign newspaper that we hear about must be an important and accreditied source of news, which is a bit of a error in judgement, I guess.

Just out of curiosity, when the US Tabloid The National Enquirer runs wild with some headline, does it get much discussion in foreign media? Talk about UFO aliens held on ice in Roswell, or Hitler being cloned in a government lab, that sort of thing?

[Siege]

Just out of curiosity, when the US Tabloid The National Enquirer runs wild with some headline, does it get much discussion in foreign media? Talk about UFO aliens held on ice in Roswell, or Hitler being cloned in a government lab, that sort of thing?

No. And the same is true for the 'reporting' of The Sun and all other such five-dime novelty rags. No-one pays them any mind. I'd never heard of this particular Swedish publication, let alone the accusations it levelled against the Israeli authorities, before now.

Anyway, according to this source, the Israelis are launching an investigation:

State Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein ordered police to launch an investigation against Prof. Yehuda Hiss, the nation's senior pathologist and director of the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute.

Hiss is accused of a long list of charges from inappropriate behavior as a medical professional to criminal acts such as the illegal sale of and dealings in organs and body parts, removing organs from deceased persons without consent, and misrepresenting organs in returned bodies.

Allegations made against Hiss in some cases include his taking organs without consent, placing the cardboard center of toilet paper rolls and metallic rods in their place to fill the voids in the body and hide the theft of the organs.

A court-ordered search of the institute revealed large supplies of stored organs taken illegally from bodies. 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.

Organs belonging to soldiers killed in various circumstances were found in the institute during a surprise search this week. After consulting with Chief Chaplain Brig. Gen. Rabbi Yisrael Weiss, it was decided that in concert with the bereaved families, graves would be opened and the organs buried along with the remains of each soldier involved.

I wonder what made this Hiss fellow and his compatriots think this was a good idea. Simple greed? Or did they think they were doing medical science a favour by harvesting organs without permission? These folks are medical professionals, presumably they have some intelligence; they must have realized this affair was going to come out and spectacularly blow up in their faces sooner or later...

[Edi]

Any Israeli "investigation" into this issue is going to be utterly worthless. At most they will hang a few scapegoats out to dry while whitewashing all the rest of it. They have a long track record of covering up any and all war crimes by the IDF, so this will be just more of the same.

[Serafine666]

This one has direct parallels as well. Mengele was not a nice person, and I'm pretty sure the Mosad was involved in hunting him down.

Unfortunately, I believe that Joseph Mengele died of natural causes instead of getting his ass blown away by Mossad. Oh well... if you're the sort to believe this sort of thing, the dear doctor is in the hands of someone whose justice he can't run away from.

[Serafine666]

No. And the same is true for the 'reporting' of The Sun and all other such five-dime novelty rags. No-one pays them any mind. I'd never heard of this particular Swedish publication, let alone the accusations it levelled against the Israeli authorities, before now.

Interestingly enough, the rags have occasionally done actual reporting and broke real stories that were ignored by reputable organizations. In the US, for example, The National Enquirer published stories around John Edwards' mistress and Jesse Jackson fathering a "love child" with a member of his Rainbow Coalition long before any other news outlet felt like it--and their stories happened to be quite accurate. The problem, of course, is that it's virtually impossible to differentiate between legitimate material and the normal tall tales.