Organ harvesting by Israelis from captive Palestinians and the trade in Israel.
Too much has been said and too often to simply accept the bullying from Tel avia and pretend not to notice these concerns. A less arrogant government would want to investigate such allegations and deal with any truth the y might find rather than allow a cloud to build. Ive spent a few hours seeking reports of different types to help me get as balanced a view as I can given the circumstances and what I present to you below is a selection of information that I hope you will be bale to use to form your own opinions about the allegations and what shroud be happening.
It goes back to the 1990s at least on the public record.
“Israel has admitted pathologists harvested organs from dead Palestinians, and others, without the consent of their families — a practice 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 ‘anti-Semitic’”. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/21/israeli-pathologists-harvested-organs
At that time in the nineties, Channel 2 TV told us about specialists at Abu Kabir harvesting skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives.
There was however, no evidence that Israelis killed people in order to harvest their organs.
November of 2015
The Palestinian Representative to the UN, Dr Riyad Mansour wrote an open letter to the UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon claiming that, under Israeli occupation in East Jerusalem, Palestinians killed and seized by Israeli soldiers were being returned with “missing corneas and other organs.”4 As a counterpoint, Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon dismissed these claims ascribing them to “anti-Semitic motives.”5
If there is any truth to Mansour’s claims, there is little clarity about which organs were missing, or whether the individuals in question were peaceful citizens or more militant aggressors. And yet, Ambassador Danon’s response bypasses the clear and pressing issue: Israel has not directly addressed this accusation of harvesting Palestinian organs.
Mansour, Riyad. “Letter from Palestinian Representative to the UN Riyad
Mansour to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon: ‘Israeli Aggression and Culture of Hate against Palestinians.’” 3 November
2015. http://palestineun.org/3-november-2015-israeli-aggression-and-culture-of-hate-against-palestinians/
The Aftonbladet
‘The Aftonbladet–Israel controversy refers to the controversy that followed the publication of a 17 August 2009 article in the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, one of the largest daily newspapers in the Nordic countries. The article revealed that Israeli troops harvested organs from Palestinians who had died in their custody. Sparking a fierce debate in Sweden and abroad, the article created a rift between the Swedish and the Israeli governments. . . [7] The Palestinian National Authority announced that it would establish a commission to investigate the article’s claims.[8][9] A survey among the cultural editors of the other major Swedish newspapers found that all would have refused the article.[10]’ .
Admission of guilt in 2009
‘In December 2009, a 2000 interview with the chief pathologist at the L. Greenberg National Institute of Forensic Medicine Yehuda Hiss was released in which he had admitted taking organs from the corpses of Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers without their families’ permission. Israeli health officials confirmed Hiss’s confession but stated that such incidents had ended in the 1990s and noted that Hiss had been removed from his post.[11][12][13]’
Organ donor in Israel did what was illegal in the US and many places
A 52-year-old organ broker in Israel, Ilan Peri.was named in a piece in the NYtimes. See link below
The interesting message for me was that Israel was then the only place on earth where such an operation could be arranged.
“Israelis needing transplants have suffered as a result. More than 1,000 people in a nation of about 6 million are on Israel’s waiting list for organs, more than half of them for kidneys. The list grows by more than 20 percent each year, health officials say. In an average year, more than 80 people die waiting, proportionally a slightly higher rate than in the United States.
To meet Israeli’s growing demand for organs, middlemen calling themselves brokers, from prominent doctors to a former spokesman for a health maintenance organization, have rushed into the market to set prices for a scarce product that can reach $150,000 for a kidney. Some advertise openly in Israeli newspapers and on radio stations, soliciting recipients and donors.
Blood libel: Kremlin claims organs harvested by Ukraine end up in Israel
Ex-security official Vladimir Ovchinsky says Ukrainian forces harvest human organs from dead and wounded as they transfer them to leading organ transplant centres such as Israel’ https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bj4uif4cs
A recent blog by a Palestinian author contains unique material
Note: Palestinians who are killed by Israelis are referred to as martyrs.
“From 36 martyrs detained in occupation refrigerators in February 2019 to 72 martyrs in February 2021, and 93 martyrs in February 2022, reaching 105 martyrs in April 2022. The number of detained martyrs in cemeteries has reached 256, including 9 children, 3 female martyrs, and 8 prisoners who died in occupation prisons.”
Translated for Medium from blogs by a Palestinian Journalist.
“In her book “On Their Dead Bodies,” Dr. Meira Weiss, the Israeli doctor and anthropology expert, stated the harvesting of the organs and mentioned that in the period between 1996 and 2002, Dr. Weiss was at the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv to do scientific research, and there she saw how the organs were getting stolen, especially from Palestinian corpses. . . . She said, “During my time at the institute, I witnessed how they would ‘take’ organs from a Palestinian body and not ‘take’ anything from the soldiers in return.” She added, “They would take corneas, skin, and heart valves, while noting that non-professionals would not notice the absence of these organs as they would place something plastic in place of the corneas and ‘take’ the skin from the back so that the family wouldn’t see it. . . The autopsy procedure was accompanied by organ removal, which was used by the Israeli Skin Bank established in 1985 to treat burns suffered by Israeli soldiers.”
There’s quite a lot of translated content not easily available via US and Western dominated media.
Also in the Ukraine context, Israel is mentioned as a key centre.
In an interview with Russian outlet Moskovskij Komsomolets, retired Major General of Police, and ex-head of the Russian Central Bureau of Interpol Vladimir Ovchinsky claimed the Armed Forces of Ukraine are delivered human organs harvested from the dead and wounded in the war, people who are still alive, such as Russian prisoners of war, and even Ukrainian civilians who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
2 View gallery
A kidney
(Photo: Shutterstock)
When asked where the organs are transported to, Ovchinsky said: “The most effective and successful ‘workshops’ are located in four countries — Turkey, India, Israel and South Korea.”
“Israel is also a leader in the field of innovative medical techniques, which are used throughout the world. The clinics of this country successfully perform organ transplant operations.”
The former advisor to the interior minister of Russia also added that large amounts of medical equipment, including containers for transporting human organs, were sent to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s invasion.” https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bj4uif4cs.
Conclusion
What this collection of links and references does for me is make it very clear just how active the organ trade is in Israel. I’m not suggesting that it is any greater than say Ukraine, driven by war, or Brazil where the trade is driven more by poverty. What is clear is that Palestinians with no state and barely anyone from the international community looking out for them and utterly deprived of any human rights by their occupier, are something of a gift to this evil trade and we should all be pushing our government to close the doors to such evil doers and extend normal human rights to the helpless people of Palestine.
