Israeli organ borrowing revisited

[Pat]

Also, it may be a language barrier issue, but saying "Palestinians were harvested for organs" implies something else than what the article is saying.

Which article do you mean? We are talking about several.

"Palestinians were harvested for organs" means they were picked up and killed in order to have their organs removed. So I meant the articles that are not saying that.
[/quote]


No, it doesn't mean that. It means exactly what it says and nothing more - that their bodies were harvested for organs. Please do inform me where you get the "picked up and killed" part from.

We do not have any hard evidence of Palestinians being "picked up and killed" - but the circumstances surrounding the events makes it quite possible, indeed I might even use the word likely, that things very similar to that have happened. If Israel truly has nothing to hide, it should lay all it's cards on the table and provide full insight into what has been going on. Indeed, if they have nothing to hide, that's the only logical thing to do. It would be in their best interest. Considering this, it will be interesting to see their behaviour. And it is interesting to have seen their behaviour.

[Martinus]

"To harvest someone for something" is not the same as "to harvest something from someone's dead body".

[Pat]

What I said was "Palestinians were harvested for organs". Unless the Palestinians were harvested of their organs while still alive, something I don't think anyone has proposed, I think it goes without saying their organs were harvested from their dead bodies.

[Josquius]

Waste not want not

[Neil]

Martinus' understanding of English is superior to his understanding of the law.

[Admiral Yi]

Sounds pretty major to me.

[Malthus]

What I said was "Palestinians were harvested for organs". Unless the Palestinians were harvested of their organs while still alive, something I don't think anyone has proposed, I think it goes without saying their organs were harvested from their dead bodies.

The allegation was that the Israelis were killing palestinians for their organs. The reality was (assuming the latest allegations are true) that the forensics lab did not have proper ethics guidelines, and was taking corneas etc. from everyone (Israeli and Palestinian alike) without getting approval from next-of-kin first.

Here's the Guardian article. The Guardian is hardly friendly to Israel:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/21/israeli-pathologists-harvested-organs

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 "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 Scheper-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."

[The Brain]

Israel is a laughable country. Film at 11.

[Pat]

The allegation was that the Israelis were killing palestinians for their organs. The reality was (assuming the latest allegations are true) that the forensics lab did not have proper ethics guidelines, and was taking corneas etc. from everyone (Israeli and Palestinian alike) without getting approval from next-of-kin first.

The circumstances surrounding the events, as presented in the Aftonbladet article, which I, for one, now deem credible, makes it likely that Palestinians were, while (maybe) not "picked up and killed" quite possibly "killed and picked up" and then brought back five days later without any organs. That is bad enough.

The writer tells about the things he has seen with his own eyes and the stories told to him by Palestinians. It is implied that he finds the stories told to him credible, particularly in the light of what he has seen himself. But he doesn't report "this has happened" or levy any "allegations" against Israel. In the article he calls for further investigation into the matter. And quite rightly so!

For that he was made the target of a viscious smear campaign. I wonder if he will receive an apology?


edit: added a "maybe"

[DGuller]

Did any of the alleged victims actually come forward, or is it just a wild speculation at this point?

[Pat]

Did any of the alleged victims actually come forward, or is it just a wild speculation at this point?

The alleged victims are dead. 

[Malthus]

The allegation was that the Israelis were killing palestinians for their organs. The reality was (assuming the latest allegations are true) that the forensics lab did not have proper ethics guidelines, and was taking corneas etc. from everyone (Israeli and Palestinian alike) without getting approval from next-of-kin first.

The circumstances surrounding the events, as presented in the Aftonbladet article, which I, for one, now deem credible, makes it likely that Palestinians were, while (maybe) not "picked up and killed" quite possibly "killed and picked up" and then brought back five days later without any organs. That is bad enough.

The writer tells about the things he has seen with his own eyes and the stories told to him by Palestinians. It is implied that he finds the stories told to him credible, particularly in the light of what he has seen himself. But he doesn't report "this has happened" or levy any "allegations" against Israel. In the article he calls for further investigation into the matter. And quite rightly so!

For that he was made the target of a viscious smear campaign. I wonder if he will receive an apology?


edit: added a "maybe"

The answer is "no". And he doesn't deserve any.

Fact is that the obvious innuendo of his article is the accusation that Israelis are killing folks for their body parts.

This is a fundamentally different issue than "an Israeli pathologist failed to get informed consent for corneal harvesting" or even worse misdeeds by pathologists.

Fact is, the latter is old news and the Swedish fellow is hardly breaking a story about it; check out the date on this story:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1173179/

So ... again, what is the point of "calling for investigation"?

Fact is, the only thing truly "new" about the Swedish story is the allegation-by-strong-innuendo (wholly defamatory and based on zero actual evidence) that Israeli soldiers were shooting folks to get their organs.

[Pat]

The allegation was that the Israelis were killing palestinians for their organs. The reality was (assuming the latest allegations are true) that the forensics lab did not have proper ethics guidelines, and was taking corneas etc. from everyone (Israeli and Palestinian alike) without getting approval from next-of-kin first.

The circumstances surrounding the events, as presented in the Aftonbladet article, which I, for one, now deem credible, makes it likely that Palestinians were, while (maybe) not "picked up and killed" quite possibly "killed and picked up" and then brought back five days later without any organs. That is bad enough.

The writer tells about the things he has seen with his own eyes and the stories told to him by Palestinians. It is implied that he finds the stories told to him credible, particularly in the light of what he has seen himself. But he doesn't report "this has happened" or levy any "allegations" against Israel. In the article he calls for further investigation into the matter. And quite rightly so!

For that he was made the target of a viscious smear campaign. I wonder if he will receive an apology?


edit: added a "maybe"

The answer is "no". And he doesn't deserve any.

Fact is that the obvious innuendo of his article is the accusation that Israelis are killing folks for their body parts.

This is a fundamentally different issue than "an Israeli pathologist failed to get informed consent for corneal harvesting" or even worse misdeeds by pathologists.

Fact is, the latter is old news and the Swedish fellow is hardly breaking a story about it; check out the date on this story:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1173179/

So ... again, what is the point of "calling for investigation"?

Fact is, the only thing truly "new" about the Swedish story is the allegation-by-strong-innuendo (wholly defamatory and based on zero actual evidence) that Israeli soldiers were shooting folks to get their organs.

Quite wrong. You link speaks of "sales of body parts". That is also what the Aftonbladet article mentions as previously well known (have you read it? I linked to it earlier in the thread).

There is absolutely nothing in your link about harvesting Palestinians for organs.

[Pat]

And by the way - not only does he deserve an apology; he deserves a prize in recognition of his journalistic work. If this whole mess really is as bad as it seems, I hope he gets one for helping to uncover it.

[Valmy]

If Israel truly has nothing to hide, it should lay all it's cards on the table and provide full insight into what has been going on. Indeed, if they have nothing to hide, that's the only logical thing to do. It would be in their best interest. Considering this, it will be interesting to see their behaviour. And it is interesting to have seen their behaviour.

Isn't this a singular forensics lab where there was poor oversight?

Secondly this is a small state surrounded by enemies, paranoid by getting attacked publicly by everybody, rather hostile to Europeans in general, and rather sure at this point that anything they say will be used to attack them.  You are naive in the extreme if you think, even if they do have nothing to hide, they are going to freely cooperate.  Why would they?  As far as they are concerned they are damned either way.

Again I find it puzzling people have such a hard time understanding the state of affairs over there.  I mean yes it would be logical for almost every other country in the world to lay everything bare but this is not every country in the world.