I realize I’m coming into the Israel-linked organ-trafficking story late. But my old editors at the CSM always stressed the value of working assiduously at a story to get it done as well as possible rather than rushing in under the illusion you can write a satisfactory “first draft of history” within the confines of a 24-hour news cycle. And I’m still working at this one… Mostly, at this point, gathering and assessing sources.
One of the ongoing diplomatic dimensions to this story has been the tension that arose between the Israeli and Swedish governments after Swedish journo Donald Bostrom published his controversial article (English translation here) recounting the many allegations Palestinians and others made back in 1987-92 that the bodies of young Palestinians who were shot dead in those years were taken by the IDF forces back into Israel where they were stripped of many transplantable organs before being returned, hastily sewn back up along the mid-line, for speedy burial by their families.
The Israeli government screamed that the article was a “blood libel” and demanded that the Swedish government “condemn” it. The Swedish government replied, unsurprisingly, that it would not take an action that would violate the country’s free-speech traditions in such a way.
Sweden took over the presidency of the EU in July. Several observers noted that the Israeli government’s salvo of harsh accusations against Sweden over the Bostrom article may also have been a shot across the bow, in an attempt to “warn” the Swedish government off from undertaking any meaningful EU activism on the Palestine issue for the rest of its six-month presidency.
Yesterday, indeed, Sweden’s Foreign Minister, the internationally renowned diplomatic “rock star” Carl Bildt, announced he was canceling a planned visit to Israel.
Most Israeli sources and commentators speculated that this was because of Bildt’s embarrassment at the prospect of protests against him over the Bostrom article. The Swedish foreign ministry’s statement said “he’s waiting for the right opportunity to do it when the peace process is maybe in a more positive state.” Which seems at least as plausible, given the outrageously provocative steps the Netanyahu government has taken over the past few days.
Anyway, back on the Israel-and-organs story…
In addition to the two I referred to in this blog post Saturday (J. Cook and Shraga Elam), I’m now looking at two more:
- * This lengthy August 25 piece in War in Context by Paul Woodward (HT: Steve C.), and
* This recent CounterPunch piece by Alison Weir.
Both of them use– and provide links for– a lot more very valuable material.
Woodward gives an excerpt from, and a link to, the very informative testimony on the worldwide market in often illegaly trafficked organs that UC Berkeley prof. Nancy Scheper-Hughes gave to a congressional committee in June 2001.
Her prepared statement starts at p.62 there.
Scheper-Hughes is one of the founders of the Organs Watch project, which has been tracking the international traffic in human organs and tissues since the late 1990s. In the hearing, which was convened originally to examine China’s role in harvesting the organs of executed prisoners, she makes clear that Israeli doctors and medical institutions are significant actors in the global market in human organs.
I became intrigued by the role Scheper-Hughes played in the most recent (end-of-July) arrest in New Jersey of Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum. In this July 24 article in the NY Daily News, Michael Daly wrote,
- Rosenbaum’s name, address and even phone number were passed to an FBI agent [in 2002] in a meeting at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan by a prominent anthropologist who has been studying and documenting organ trafficking for more than a decade.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes of the University of California, Berkeley, was and is very clear as to Rosenbaum’s role in the ring.
“He is the main U.S. broker for an international trafficking network,” she said.
Her sources include a man who started working with Rosenbaum imagining he was helping people in desperate need. The man then began to see the donors, or to be more accurate, sellers, who were flown in from impoverished countries such as Moldova.
“He said it was awful. These people would be brought in and they didn’t even know what they were supposed to be doing and they would want to go home and they would cry,” Scheper-Hughes said.
The man called Rosenbaum “a thug” who would pull out a pistol he was apparently licensed to carry and tell the sellers, “You’re here. A deal is a deal. Now, you’ll give us a kidney or you’ll never go home.’ ”
Scheper-Hughes felt she had to stop Rosenbaum. She met with the FBI.
“I always thought of it as my Dick Tracy moment,” she said Thursday.
She waited and waited for something to be done. The FBI may have been following the lead of the State Department, which dismissed organ trafficking as “urban legend.”
“It would be impossible to conceal a clandestine organ trafficking ring,” a 2004 State Department report stated.
Scheper-Hughes had better luck in Brazil and in South Africa, where law enforcement corroborated her findings and acted decisively…
Scheper-Hughes strikes me as an exemplary individual. She has been working hard to try to expand the role that anthropologists can play as socially activist public intellectuals.
Her work on the Israel case also, it strikes me, helps us to make sense of the many different episodes of human-body abuse that have been reported out of Israel.
She has also been one of the leaders of the international effort to ban “transplant tourism” and to draw up the 2008 Declaration of Istanbul on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism, which stated the following:
- The Istanbul Declaration proclaims that the poor who sell their organs are being exploited, whether by richer people within their own countries or by transplant tourists from abroad. Moreover, transplant tourists risk physical harm by unregulated and illegal transplantation. Participants in the Istanbul Summit concluded that transplant commercialism, which targets the vulnerable, transplant tourism, and organ trafficking should be prohibited. And they also urged their fellow transplant professionals, individually and through their organizations, to put an end to these unethical activities and foster safe, accountable practices that meet the needs of transplant recipients while protecting donors.
Countries from which transplant tourists originate, as well as those to which they travel to obtain transplants, are just beginning to address their respective responsibilities to protect their people from exploitation and to develop national self-sufficiency in organ donation. The Declaration should reinforce the resolve of governments and international organizations to develop laws and guidelines to bring an end to wrongful practices. “The legacy of transplantation is threatened by organ trafficking and transplant tourism. The Declaration of Istanbul aims to combat these activities and to preserve the nobility of organ donation. The success of transplantation as a life-saving treatment does not require—nor justify—victimizing the world’s poor as the source of organs for the rich” (Steering Committee of the Istanbul Summit).
Anyway, there are a lot more dimensions to this story that I want to look at. I see that Wikipedia already has a lengthy and very informative page on the Aftonbladet-Israel controversy, as they call it. I think I’ll spend a bit of time over there now.
As far as I understood it, there’s a story about a Jewish doctor in the US, who has trafficked in human organs, pretty disgusting, and a doctor in Israel, who has allowed removal of organs from cadavers. In comparison there was a Dutch doctor at Alder Hay children’s hospital in the UK, who removed large numbers of organs from infant cadavers without authorisation, “for research purposes”.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel has in fact removed Palestinian organs for transplant purposes, but the evidence as it stands does not prove it. We need a higher standard of proof.
Two videos of two of the authours in the above article
Donald Bostrom Swedish Journalist on Israeli organ harvesting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZxyD931dEQ
Alison Weir: Israeli Organ Harvesting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nq6YkWeH74
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel has in fact removed Palestinian organs for transplant purposes, but the evidence as it stands does not prove it. We need a higher standard of proof.’
why are some people so ready to trash this story…Theres more than enough evidence to get an independent investigation…You act as if there is no evidence what so ever!
Why do we need a “higher standard of proof’ Alex? Are we a Court of Law?
Are we proposing to do anything more than suggest that the matter be investigated thoroughly with a view to discovering the truth?
Is this not a situation in which all the weight of power is against the possible victims, and in which all that is being suggested is that the deaths and, unexplained, ‘autopsies’ of a number of stateless, unprotected, persecuted and assassinated persons be openly and seriously looked into?
All that is required is to suppose, for the purposes of argument, that Palestinians, not of the Jewish faith, are human beings too. And that we have a responsibility not to be accomplices in their persecution.
Let’s have more light and less heat, please. Bevin, right now we do not have enough evidence to conclude that Palestinian organs have been harvested for transplant, let alone that Palestinians are being targeted for their organs, and certainly not that Palestinians are being murdered for their organs. We DO have enough to warrant an investigation. So, let’s make sure there is an independent investigation, and let’s agree to accept the results. In the meantime, I for one, am not going to run around yelling that Palestinians are being murdered for their organs until an investigation proves they are.
Seems like the practice of organ trade is more widespread than than initially reported.
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/lets-see-if-we-can-go-one-day-without-a-new-israeli-scandal/
‘In the meantime, I for one, am not going to run around yelling that Palestinians are being murdered for their organs until an investigation proves they are’
shirin, what investigator had you in mind? The only reason uve even heard of this story is Bostroms article breached a wall of silence,a breach youd love to close.
You can help by signing the petition:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/investigateorgantheft/
why are some people so ready to trash this story…Theres more than enough evidence to get an independent investigation…You act as if there is no evidence what so ever!
Ask, as well, “Why are people so eager to trash folks they dismissively call “truthers?”
There are some things that “serious” people are just not allowed to consider, without a diminishment of their “seriousness” quotient, by which their utterances are judged…
I think that the normal reaction of a normal country against whom such accusations were raised would be to launch an immediate and open, public investigation to either confirm the story and take prompt corrective action or establish its falsity and condemn it. I see that the PA has set up such an investigation; has anyone else?
I think that the normal reaction of a normal country against whom such accusations were raised would be to launch an immediate and open, public investigation to either confirm the story and take prompt corrective action or establish its falsity and condemn it.
If you’d been paying attention you would have noticed that both Jonathan Cook and Shraga Elam have provided evidence for sources that Helena refers to as “exemplary” showing that Israel has indeed carried out three such investigations: one independent investigation and two in the Knesset. All were completely open and public.
Further, if you read Bostrom’s article carefully, you will see that he only specifies one suspected case of “organ harvesting”, and even that one the victim’s closest family members deny. Further, Bostrom admitted (again you can find this in one of the “excellent” sources that Jonathan Cook cites at the foot of his article) that he has absolutely no proof of anything he says.
I see that the PA has set up such an investigation; has anyone else?
Yes. I heard on the radio on my way home today that they are now claiming that 275 Palestinians have gone missing!
And just for the record, with the exception of corneas, skin and bones, internal organs are useless for transplant within minutes after the heart stops beating.
And now I’ll go back to boycotting this blog.
There is no 100% evidence for the case although the Swedish journalist claims that Palestinians families telling him their loved one body comes with stitches on their body.
Don’t know why that journalist did not made efforts to get some specialist to check then he have backing for his reporting?
Israelis claimed that they do autopsy on the dead Palestine as rotten practise??
The question is why Israelis do autopsy on their enemy bodies and spent time, money and resources for this practise?
What they got from it? Is it as Alex said “for research purposes” to know more about their enemy from inside who came from a branch of their family tree?!
Note: in Iraq there were a lot of talk early days of Iraqi prisoners have same cases, some stories after Iraqi hospitals that controlled by Bader Militia which where the people came dead for just simple causes that they went to hospitals in Baghdad, there is many claims that there where “organ harvesting” by Israelis/ Mosad in Iraq?
And now I’ll go back to boycotting this blog.
I am glad to hear that JES is boycotting this blog, but like all boycotters, he still continues to read it, and to post when it suits.
Gosh! I hope the BDS movement is more disciplined and effective in its boycott actions than JES has been in his!
Hey, even I bought grapes in the 1960s! And I supposed that you two use a Macintosh to post here? Give me a break!
As a matter of fact I DO use a MAC.
The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) welcomes the release of the journalists Hasan Rjoub on 16 / 8, Seri Al-Qodwa, on 19 / 8 and Isam Shawar on 31 / 8, it condemns the continued arrests of journalists by the Israeli occupation authorities and Palestinian security forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and calls for the release of all arrested journalists.
On the other hand, MADA Center denounce the campaign being waged by the Israeli authorities against the Swedish newspaper, Aftonbladet, after publication of a report by the journalist Donald Bostrom on the theft of Palestinian organs after being killed by Israeli army.
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6895
back when this story first surfaced after a little googling this israel national news story surfaced from 05, also one of cook’s sources
Infamous Chief Pathologist to Once Again Evade Punishment.
Hiss receive only a reprimand for his involvement in the unauthorized removal of parts from 125 bodies…..In all of the 125 cases, Dr. Hiss and his subordinates removed organs, bones and tissue without the permission of, and in many cases, against the expressed wishes of the families of the deceased.
According to evidence submitted in the past, Abu Kabir had a “museum of skulls” set up by Dr. Hiss that included the skulls of IDF soldiers that had been shot in the head. He has also been investigated for selling organs and falsifying testimony.
i just put two and two together. it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why israels chief pathologist would limit himself to ONLY stealing body parts of jews and would never do the same w/ palestinians. it is because Dr Hiss had more respect for muslim burial customs than jewish customs. naturally!
what i cannot figure out is the huge discrepancy in the reactions of the israeli public. when Dr. Chaim and Dina Buzgallo, the parents of soldier Ze’ev Buzgallo came forward after an independent autopsy and made allegations his son’s organs had been stolen, nobody screamed blood libel or accused him of anti semitism. there was an investigation.
the question we should all be asking is not whether this pathologist harvested palestinian organs, but why not just release the identities of all the 125 corpses recovered from the earlier investigation? an investigation has already taken place. were there 125 israeli families notified?
Additional reports and a demand for an international investigation.
New Jewish organ theft gang busted
Wed, 09 Sep 2009 08:31:03 GMT
The Jewish group is said to be connected to Israeli rabbi Levy Rosenbaum, who was recently arrested for direct importing human organs.
New reports have surfaced on the arrest of yet another Jewish organ trading gang in the United States involved in the abduction of Algerian children.
Dr. Mustafa Khayatti, the head of the Algerian National Committee for the Development of Health Research, revealed on Sunday that the New York city police have arrested members of a Jewish gang who abducted Algerian children for their organs.
Khayatti said the arrests came after Interpol found that children in western Algeria were abducted and taken to Morocco to have their kidneys harvested.
Their organs were later trafficked to the United States and Israel and sold for $20,000 to $100,000 each.
The group is said to be connected to Israeli rabbi Levi Rosenbaum, who was recently arrested in New Jersey for direct involvement in importing human organs.
Following Rosenbaum’s arrest, US authorities detained some 44 others, including rabbis and mayors in New Jersey, who were prosecuted for money laundering and human organs trade.
Last month, a report published in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, accused Israeli soldiers of kidnapping Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip for their organs, indicating a possible link between the Israeli military and the mafia of human organs detected in the US.
Some Arab countries have called for an international inquiry into the allegations.
FF/AKM