December 21, 2009

Israel Admits to Illegally Harvesting Palestinian's Organs

fuuuuuucked

From the Guardian



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."

1 comment:

  1. The murderous assault on Gaza, the daily miseries of Palestinians, should be the focus of our coverage. The practices here if done without consent as appears, are horrible, though not clear who is behind them: a few doctors? head of medical institute? Higher? Every time we are sensationalistic, we hurt the cause.

    Every time there is a whif of sensationalism of anti-semitism we give massive, huge ammunition to the murderous right-wingers to want an excuse to ignore just criticism. I was surprised the article waited until the 6th paragraph to mention it was also Israeli soldiers and Israeli civilians who were 'harvested', not only Palestinians, as is the impression in the first 5 paragraphs. But at least the original article didn't give that impression in the title, they used the title about harvesting organs, not sounding as if it was only from Palestinians. It's a bit like an article about US government beating up Americans and the title and first five paragraphs make it sound like it's only black protestors when it was all protestors were who (unfairly, wrongly, etc) beaten up. If honesty isn't a strong enough motivation, let this be: it hurt the cause, badly, and has time and time again, to sensationalize. Report like you're a neutral Martian from Mars. Such a report would put in the title or in the first 3 pagraphs, to clear it was not only Palestinians but also Israeli soldiers and Israeli civilians who were harvested.

    The list of things that screw only Palestinians is long, and ugly, no need to add to that list things that don't belong there, the real honest list of things done only to Palestinians is horrid and ugly enough.

    ReplyDelete