XPost: alt.religion.christianity, alt.religion.islam, alt.religion.christian   
   From: al92653@xyz.com   
      
   Preface   
      
      
      
   This story was first offered to the Guardian's Comment is Free site. It was   
   received on August 26 by Brian Whitaker, a commissioning editor at CiF and a   
   former Middle East editor of the newspaper, who responded that "we're minded   
   to use it" but that because the issue was "a hot potato" it would take "a   
   day or two" to decide.   
      
      
      
   On September 3, more than a week later, Georgina Henry, CiF's executive   
   editor, replied, apologising for the delay but saying she was going to   
   reject the piece. Her strange reasoning led to a short but revealing   
   correspondence. I include it here for anyone interested.   
      
      
      
      
      
   The Missing Link in Israeli Organ Theft?   
      
      
      
   The Autopsy Surgeon Aftonbladet Forgot   
      
      
      
   By JONATHAN COOK   
      
   Counterpunch   
      
   September 4-6, 2009   
      
      
      
   The hyperventilating by Israel's leaders [1] over a story published in a   
   Swedish newspaper last month [2] suggesting that the Israeli army assisted   
   in organ theft from Palestinians has distracted attention from the   
   disturbing allegations made by Palestinian families that were the basis of   
   the article's central claim.   
      
      
      
   The families' fears that relatives, killed by the Israeli army, had body   
   parts removed during unauthorized autopsies performed in Israel have been   
   overshadowed by accusations of a "blood libel" directed against the   
   reporter, Donald Bostrom, and the Aftonbladet newspaper, as well as the   
   Swedish government and people.   
      
      
      
   I have no idea whether the story is true. Like most journalists working in   
   Israel and Palestine, I have heard such rumours before. Until Bostrom wrote   
   his piece, no Western journalist, as far as I know, had investigated them.   
   After so many years, the assumption by journalists was that there was little   
   hope of finding evidence -- apart from literally by digging up the corpses.   
   Doubtless, the inevitable charge of anti-semitism such reports attract acted   
   as a powerful deterrent too.   
      
      
      
   What is striking about this episode is that the families making the claims   
   were not given a hearing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the first   
   intifada, when most of the reports occurred, and are still being denied the   
   right to voice their concerns today.   
      
      
      
   Israel's sensitivity to the allegation of organ theft -- or "harvesting", as   
   many observers coyly refer to the practice -- appears to trump the genuine   
   concerns of the families about possible abuse of their loved ones.   
      
      
      
   Bostrom has been much criticized for the flimsy evidence he produced in   
   support of his inflammatory story. Certainly there is much to criticize in   
   his and the newspaper's presentation of the report.   
      
      
      
   Most significantly, Bostrom and Aftonbladet exposed themselves to the charge   
   of anti-semitism -- at least from Israeli officials keen to make mischief --   
   through a major error of judgment.   
      
      
      
   They muddied the waters by trying to make a tenuous connection between the   
   Palestinian families' allegations about organ theft during unauthorized   
   autopsies and the entirely separate revelations this month that a group of   
   US Jews had been arrested for money-laundering and trading in body parts.   
   [3]   
      
      
      
   In making that connection, Bostrom and Aftonbladet suggested that the   
   problem of organ theft is a current one when they have produced only   
   examples of such concern from the early 1990s. They also implied, whether   
   intentionally or not, that abuses allegedly committed by the Israeli army   
   could somehow be extrapolated more generally to Jews.   
      
      
      
   The Swedish reporter should instead have concentrated on the valid question   
   raised by the families about why the Israeli army, by its own admission,   
   took away the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed by its soldiers,   
   allowed autopsies to be performed on them without the families' permission   
   and then returned the bodies for burial in ceremonies held under tight   
   security.   
      
      
      
   Bostrom's article highlighted the case of one Palestinian, 19-year-old Bilal   
   Ahmed Ghanan, from the village of Imatin in the northern West Bank, who was   
   killed in 1992. A shocking picture of Bilal's stitched-up body accompanied   
   the report. [4]   
      
      
      
   Bostrom has told the Israeli media that he knows of at least 20 cases of   
   families claiming that the bodies of loved ones were returned with body   
   parts missing, [5] although he did not say whether any of these alleged   
   incidents occurred more recently.   
      
      
      
   In 1992, the year in question, Bostrom says, the Israeli army admitted to   
   him that it took away for autopsy 69 of the 133 Palestinians who died of   
   unnatural causes. The army has not denied this part of his report.   
      
      
      
   A justifiable question from the families relayed by Bostrom is: why did the   
   army want the autopsies carried out? Unless it can be shown that the army   
   intended to conduct investigations into the deaths -- and there is   
   apparently no suggestion that it did -- the autopsies were unnecessary.   
      
      
      
   In fact, they were more than unnecessary. They were counterproductive if we   
   assume that the army has no interest in gathering evidence that could be   
   used in future war crimes prosecutions of its soldiers. Israel has a long   
   track record of stymying investigations into Palestinian deaths at the hands   
   of its soldiers, and carried on that ignoble tradition in the wake of its   
   recent assault on Gaza.   
      
      
      
   Of even greater concern for the Palestinian families is the fact that at   
   around the time the bodies of their loved ones were whisked off by the army   
   for autopsy, the only institute in Israel that conducts such autopsies, Abu   
   Kabir, near Tel Aviv, was almost certainly at the centre of a trade in   
   organs that later became a scandal inside Israel.   
      
      
      
   Equally disturbing, the doctor behind the plunder of body parts, Prof Yehuda   
   Hiss, appointed director of the Abu Kabir institute in the late 1980s, has   
   never been jailed despite admitting to the organ theft and he continues to   
   be the state's chief pathologist at the institute.   
      
      
      
   Hiss was in charge of the autopsies of Palestinians when Bostrom was   
   listening to the families' claims in 1992. Hiss was subsequently   
   investigated twice, in 2002 and 2005, over the theft of body parts on a   
   large scale.   
      
      
      
   Allegations of Hiss' illegal trade in organs was first revealed in 2000 by   
   investigative reporters at the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, which reported   
   that he had "price listings" for body parts and that he sold mainly to   
   Israeli universities and medical schools. [6]   
      
      
      
   Apparently undeterred by these revelations, Hiss still had an array of body   
   parts in his possession at Abu Kabir when the Israeli courts ordered a   
   search in 2002. Israel National News reported at the time: "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." [7]   
      
      
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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