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Israel to return Palestinian body parts

By Jonathon Cook | November 15, 2013

Remember back to 2009, when there was a huge row over allegations in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that Israel had been secretly harvesting body parts from Palestinians in the occupied territories.

There were problems with this story, which suggested that Israel had a shoot-to-kill policy so that it could get organs from those it killed.

But Israel effectively shut down all debate about the story and the validity of any of its allegations by accusing anyone who mentioned organ harvesting in Israel of committing a “blood libel” against Israel / Jews.

I found myself caught up in the margins of this row. In the wake of the Swedish report, I submitted an article to the Guardian Comment is Free section making a point that was actually well known inside Israel at that time, though largely concealed to outside observers.

Israel has one forensic lab, known as Abu Kabir, near Tel Aviv, where autopsies are carried out. The chief pathologist there, Prof Yehuda Hiss, had by the time the Swedish story broke been repeatedly pulled up for stealing body parts – and on an industrial scale. Not just from Palestinians but from Israelis too.

His office was found to contain thousands of preserved body parts; it seems he harvested them to use them in medical experiments because of a shortage of Israeli donors.

What was surprising was that, despite his being repeatedly investigated by the police and admitting to organ theft, Hiss was never jailed by the courts nor was he removed from Abu Kabir.

When I tried to publish this piece, which you can read here, the Guardian ran a mile, terrified of the “blood libel” accusation Israel was using very successfully to silence the media. It was one of many occasions when I personally experienced the Guardian pulling its punches to avoid upsetting Israel.

Now it seems, according to Israel Channel 2, Israel has very belatedly agreed to return some body parts to the Palestinian families whose loved ones were organ-harvested.

Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh said: “The [former] director of the institute, Dr Yehuda Hiss, admitted to stealing organs of martyrs and other Palestinians during autopsies.”

The admission being referred to actually dates to an interview from 2000 with a US academic, nine years before the Aftonbladet report, although it was only made widely public in 2010. Nonetheless, Hiss had admitted as much to the Israeli media, police and courts for many years.

In other words, Israel knew all along that the accusation of official complicity in the theft of body parts was no blood libel; it was the long-standing reality. So why do we need to read the Arab media to find out about it?

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November 17, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel agrees to return stolen organs of dead Palestinians

Al Arabiya | November 14, 2013

Israel has agreed to return organs of dead Palestinians harvested by its forensic pathologists during autopsies, Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh told Ma’an news agency on Wednesday.

Head of Israel’s Abu Kabir forensic institute, Jehuda Hiss, had admitted harvesting organs from dead bodies without the permission of their families.

“We started to harvest corneas … Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family,” Hiss said in an interview with an American academic in 2000. The interview was released in 2010 and part of it was aired by Israel’s Channel 2 TV.

The Channel 2 report said forensic experts harvested bones, corneas, heart valves and skin from dead Israeli soldiers, citizens, Palestinians and even foreign workers.

The Israeli army admitted to organ harvesting but said the practice was no longer performed. “This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer,” the military told Channel 2.

In the interview, Hiss described how his doctors would mask the removal of corneas from bodies. “We’d glue the eyelid shut,” he said. “We wouldn’t take corneas from families we knew would open the eyelids,” Associated Press reported.

The Palestinian official said Israel will “soon be returning some of the organs,” Ma’an reported.

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November 16, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment