UN propagates Israeli organ theft allegation

Just Journalism
26 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

The International Organization for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (EAFORD), a Libyan-founded non-governmental organization, has submitted a document to the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council--the body that commissioned the Goldstone Report, which alleged Israel was guilty of war crimes in Gaza--to investigate allegations that 'Israeli physicians, Medical Centres, rabbis and the Israeli army' may be stealing the organs of 'dead, kidnapped and killed' Palestinians for sale on the black market. The document has been circulated by the Human Rights Council as Agenda item 7 for the body’s thirteenth session (A/HRC/13/NGO/23), and although it has been covered by the Jerusalem Post and Canada’s National Post, no British media outlet has so far reported on it.

EAFORD was accredited as an NGO by the UN in 1981, and its focus, judging by its website and publications, is on equating Zionism with racism and South African apartheid.

Its present submission had been screened for publication by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, a post currently held by Navanethem Pillay, and granted the certified logo of the United Nations.

By way of introduction, EAFORD accuses Israel of 'ethnic cleansing and massacres' against the Palestinians, 'occupy[ing] the rest of Palestine,' creating 'largest open-air prison in the world,' whose 'consequences amount to an act of siege and economic genocide.'

EAFORD then proceeds to state the following:

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British Baroness: Israel Went to Haiti to Harvest Organs

"Jihad Jenny" Tonge whips up ancient blood libels yet again.


Carol Gould
Pajamasmedia.com
28 February '10

If you think the title of this article is an early April fool or if you are Jewish and think this story is a Purim shpiel, you will be disappointed.

British Baroness Tonge, also known as “Jihad Jenny,” has been bellowing to the world that Israel must clear its name after being accused by a Palestinian newspaper of making its way to earthquake-hit Haiti in order to harvest organs. Over Valentine’s Day weekend the Liberal Democrat Party sacked the baroness, who is also a physician, as shadow health minister. Since then there has been talk of her being sacked as party whip. Her comments were published in the Jewish Chronicle of February 12 after the Palestine Telegraph, of which she is a patron, ran a story about Israel harvesting organs. She said to the JC: “The IDF and the Israeli Medical Association should establish an independent inquiry immediately to clear the names of the team in Haiti.”

Okay, I can already hear the jokes about Israel harvesting passports for junkets to Dubai, but the concept of body-plundering is a throwback to the murderously anti-Semitic blood libel legacy of British and European history, when Jews were accused of harvesting Christian blood for use in religious rituals. (Jew-hatred reached a fever pitch after the York massacre and they were expelled from England in 1290 until readmission in the seventeenth century.)

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Senior UK Liberal-Democrat fired after suggestions Israelis have been harvesting bodily organs in Haiti

Robin Shepherd
Robin Shepherd Online
14 February '10

In a rare piece of good news from the UK, Baroness Tonge has been dismissed as spokesperson for the Liberal Democrat Party in the House of Lords after suggesting that Israel should investigate claims that members of its relief team in Haiti had been harvesting bodily organs and selling them on the black market.

Tonge has a sordid record of anti-Israel extremism. In 2004, she even went on record as saying she might have become a suicide bomber had she been born a Palestinian.

In her latest outburst, she associated herself with a medieval-style blood libel which was started last year by Sweden’s top selling newspaper Aftonbladet. The paper claimed that Israeli soldiers were murdering Palestinian children in order to harvest their bodily organs and sell them on the black market, possibly in conjunction with Jews in the United States. After Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt refused to distance his country from the story it spread like wildfire across the Muslim world and beyond.

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Swedish Editor Accuses “Liberals” of Covering-Up “Israeli Organ Thefts”

Judeosphere
31 January '10

Jesús Alcalá—a lawyer, writer and former chairman of the Swedish branch of Amnesty International—recently wrote an article in the Swedish daily newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet, titled “The Dangers of Careless Journalism.”

Alcalá has harsh words for the tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet’s publication of Donald Boström’s article on “Israeli organ harvesting”—and for Åsa Linderborg, the Aftonbladet editor who continues to stand by the story:

Every year around thirty different human rights organizations – international, Israeli and Palestinian – report on abuses and violations of human rights in Israel, on the West Bank, and in Gaza. The criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is often harsh. But none of these organizations have ever accused or suspected Israel of stealing organs from Palestinians that the Israeli army has killed. Not Amnesty. Not Human Rights Watch. Not a single of Israel’s many Jewish and Palestinian human rights organizations. Not a single one.

I have no reason to believe that Boström is an anti-Semite. I am sure that he is driven by genuine concern for the rights of the Palestinians. His cause is good. I believe the same of Åsa Linderborg.

Still. The end cannot justify the means. The carelessness is dangerous. 
Boström is familiar with the conflict in the Middle East. Is it then too much to ask that he avoids any connection to the myths of Jewish blood libels? Is it not careless to lend credence to rumors that are consequently exploited to strengthen hatred?
 Barely a month after Boström’s article is published; the Algerian paper al-Khabar writes that a Jewish organ trade group has kidnapped a great number of Algerian and Moroccan children.

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Israel's Haiti relief elicits both praise and condemnation

Adam Holland
26 January '10

(Adam gives an excellent survey what has been put out there. The good guys on one side and the problematic personalities, as is expected. Y.)

Israel's efforts to assist Haitians at their time of need have, for the most part, been praised. At a time when virtually all Haitians were deprived of health care, Israel was the first to set up a fully operational field hospital, before the U.S., France, the U.N., Red Cross, etc.. They also sent rescue teams to find and extract people trapped in collapsed buildings -- an effort which saved many lives. Predictably, those who are predisposed to do so have found grounds for condemnation in what most observers would call noble efforts and achievements. Here's a sampling:

Richard Silverstein, a Seattle resident who blogs at Tikkun Olam (rough translation: "repair the world"), has found Israel's Haitian relief to be the sort of world-repairing the world could do without. In a strongly worded column he calls "The Zionization of Disaster Relief" (read here), Silverstein writes that sending portable toilets, rather than doctors, medical equipment and rescue teams, would have been more useful to the Haitians. Silverstein condemns Israel's decision to send doctors instead of toilets as being based on public relations considerations.

He also claims without providing a source that a Haitian woman who gave birth in the Israeli field hospital was pressured by the Israelis to name her child "Israel". He captions a photo of the mother and child posted on his blog "A baby named Israel...who, if he reaches adulthood, would never be welcome in Israel". (On the contrary, that child would be very welcome there, but if he does visit, Silverstein will condemn it as Zionist PR.)

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The tragic coma of English reason

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
23 December 09

In recent days, an open and unambiguous medieval-style blood libel has been regurgitated in the mainstream British media. This has been full of the sensational report that Israeli doctors had been ’harvesting’ the organs of Palestinians. The implication was that a) this was only being done to Palestinians and b) the Palestinians had been alive when it was done. Neither calumny was remotely true.

What had actually happened was that – as Tom Gross has noted -- some 15 years ago one rogue Israeli doctor had been transplanting minor organs like cornea and skin from dead Israelis – mainly Jewish Israelis, but also a few Arab ones – without obtaining permission from the families. This is on a par with a similar scandal in Britain, where it was discovered that doctors had been removing organs from dead children as a matter of routine without informing their parents.

In the Israelis case, there was no use of organs from living patients. There was no singling out of Palestinians. Yet that was the impression created by one disgusting media report after another. As Gross observes, so far it is only the Guardian which has had the grace to acknowledge its error and put out a correction. No-one else seems to have bothered.

(Full article)
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More Swedish Blood Libels

Honest Reporting/Backspin
04 November 09

Not only has Donald Bostrom reiterated his bodysnatching charge against the IDF, Sunday's Aftonbladet reported (and Haaretz picked up on) that the Swedish daily has been in contact with

"a woman in Geneva whom, together with a lawyer, is preparing a letter to the UN concerning 15 illegally autopsied Palestinians, of whom eight have been proven to have missing organs - as late as in 2008."

Haaretz elaborates:

The piece, written by culture section editor Åsa Linderborg, claims that the material has not yet been disclosed as the Palestinian families in question are scared to death of Israeli reprisals.

Linderborg referred to a recent organ trafficking case in Haifa, in which two men were jailed, and the case of Yehuda Hiss, Israel's chief state pathologist and former director of the Abu Kabir forensic institute, who admitted to have taken tissue from a deceased Israeli soldier in 2001.

"Two months after the publication by Aftonbladet, the first verdict hits [in the Israeli organ affair]. There will be more," said the piece.

The Haifa incident was indeed shameful, and the case of Yehuda Hiss even more so. But Aftonbladet's attempt to link them (and the New Jersey scandal) to the IDF is based on no evidence.

The same Haaretz report also describes a telling exchange between Bostrom and one of his Swedish critics:

Economist Anna Vider also attacked Boström's working methods, citing his use of witness reports solely from Palestinians, his failure to follow up with the Israeli authorities, the lack of interviews, and research. She also slammed him for linking a 1992 incident to allegations of organ trafficking in New Jersey in 2009.

"It takes a lot of research, it´s not just something you do in a week," Vider said: "As a journalist, he [Boström] should have taken it further. I think it's dishonest."

Boström rebuffed the criticism by saying: "I'm a reporter, not an investigator."

"He links the events, but refuses to discuss the connection," Vider continued. "It is indecent to wait for the scandal in New Jersey before publishing it. Why didn't he do it in 1992? This article has great impact on how Israelis look on Sweden and our involvement in the conflict."

Whoa! Bostrom's shirking off a reporter's basic responsibility of fact checking. As every student learns in Journalism 101: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."

Related: Anatomy of a Swedish Blood Libel

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Jewish Justice or no Justice

Moshe Feiglin
27 Elul 5769
16 September 09

"Today the world is being born, today all the creations of all the worlds stand in judgment." "And it will be determined for the countries, which for the sword and which for peace." (Rosh Hashanah liturgy)

As we enter the gates of our synagogues this Rosh Hashanah, it looks like we will also be entering the gates of the international court in The Hague. This is the inevitable destination of a nation that insists on detaching its Judaism from its national life. If we are not interested in Jewish justice in Jerusalem, we will be treated to Western, Christian justice in Spain, England or The Hague.

When a Swedish newspaper reported that Israel's soldiers slaughtered "Palestinians" so that they could sell their organs, we didn't believe that anybody would take the bizarre story seriously. But it is actually making quite a few waves. Soon an international investigative committee will be established to reveal "the truth." After all, such serious charges must be investigated thoroughly. And who, if not the judges of enlightened Europe, are more worthy to reveal the truth with clarity and complete objectivity?

Blood libels are nothing new. There is nothing more logical about selling "Palestinian" organs than about slaughtering Christian children to use their blood to bake matzahs. So how do these absurd claims become legitimate? It is not really a matter of legal fact. It is a matter of the location of the judicial body.

When a Jew is in exile and the Christians are the judicial authority, the blood libel becomes a possibility. The question is not if the Jews slaughtered Christian children to use their blood to bake matzahs. The question is if the issue is justiciable. In the Christian courts of the Middle Ages the answer was affirmative.

Likewise, in the current organ harvest story, there is no question of revealing the truth. The only question is if the judicial tribunal that we have accepted upon ourselves will decide to judge these ludicrous accusations.
Then – in the days of the blood libels, the Jews did not have the option to choose which judicial authority they would accept. They lived under the dominion of the judicial authority that considered these libels fact. But today, the Jews willingly surrendered their own judicial authority. They chose, of their own free will, to forgo their ethical sovereignty and to deposit it in the hands of the Western world and the International Court in The Hauge.

"What is the problem in Azoun?" my frustrated neighbor asked me the other day, after a steady stream of rocks and firebombs has continued to emanate from this 'peaceful' Arab village. "They bring in an entire IDF division and they still can't stop the violence? Wouldn't it just be easier to cut off their electricity?" Technically, my neighbor is right. We could easily leave the reserve soldiers at home and enjoy quiet nonetheless. But the State of Israel and the IDF are fettered to the Christian judicial dominion that we have brought upon ourselves.

As the Beijing Olympics approached, I wrote that the State of Israel, as the representative of the Jewish Nation, should boycott the games. The Chinese have established concentration camps for opponents of the radically leftist regime there. Next to the concentration camps there are "medical centers" that specialize in supplying human organs by order. No lines, no problems finding the proper match, any organ can be supplied; kidneys, corneas, hearts – the organs are always fresh and plentiful. They belong to "criminals" who have been executed but who, at the last minute repented and donated their organs as an act of atonement. How noble. In reality, the organs are harvested while the victims are still alive. That is probably the best way to keep them fresh.

I claimed that Israel - the representative of the Jewish Nation, the People of the Book who herald the ethics of the prophets – must see itself as a lighthouse of morality for the world and should not lend legitimacy to the regime of horrors in China by attending the Olympic Games.

The reactions that I received were more or less: "America, England and France are not boycotting the Olympics, and you expect Israel to boycott them?" In other words, it cannot be that we bear a more fundamentally ethical insight than the Western world. Furthermore, we are so small, so who are we to boycott the Chinese giant if the US and Europe are not doing so? In other words, morality is measured in square kilometers and the size of a country's population and army.

When charges of organ harvesting by Israel's soldiers began to emerge, I thought that it was quite "measure for measure." We rejected our universal role and refused to take a stand on the Chinese organ harvesting issue, and got it right back in our own collective face.

We are the children of the King. We do not have the privilege to stand passively at the sidelines and to be "just another country." We have only two options: One is to judge the world according to Jewish justice – the ethical justice of the prophets that must be restored to Jerusalem. The second option is, right after Rosh Hashanah, to re-lock our universal responsibility safely in our synagogues and to leave Judaism strictly in the domain of religion. If that is the option we choose, we will not be judging the world according to the ethics of the prophets. The world will judge us – in the International Court in The Hague.

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Swedish Blood Libel Author: 'I Have No Clue'

Backspin

19 August 09

Donald Bostrom, who wrote the Aftonbladet story accusing Israel of harvesting Palestinian organs, now says he has no idea if the story is true. The Jerusalem Postwrites:

"I have a personal opinion, it concerns me that it's true," Donald Bostrom, who penned the story, told Israel Radio en route to an emergency meeting at the editorial offices Aftonbladet, presumably to discuss the aftermath of the report.

"I was [present] during the interview that night, I was a witness. It concerns me to the extent that I want it to be investigated," Bostrom told the station. "But whether it's true or not - I have no idea, I have no clue."

But Aftonbladet's digging in it's heels.

Asa Linderborg, an editor of the newspaper's culture section which printed the story, told Haaretz that the publication "stands behind the demand for an international inquiry."

Whatever happened to fact-checking and independently verifying sources?

Related: IDF accused of harvesting....

Outrage: IDF Accused of "Harvesting Palestinian Organs"

HonestReporting.com

A Swedish newspaper publishes disgraceful accusations.

Charging a mainstream media outlet with anti-Semitism is not something that we do lightly. Sometimes, however, an article appears that is so outrageous that we have to question the motivation or agenda behind the writer and the media that chooses to publish it.

Ha'aretz reports:

A leading Swedish newspaper reported this week that Israeli soldiers are abducting Palestinians in order to steal their organs, a claim that prompted furious condemnation and accusations of anti-Semitic blood libel from a rival publication.

"They plunder the organs of our sons," read the headline in Sweden's largest daily newspaper, the left-leaningAftonbladet, which devoted a double spread in its cultural section to the article.

(Click here for the original article in Swedish)

The report quotes Palestinian claims that young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by the Israel Defense Forces, and their bodies returned to the families with missing organs.

"'Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,' relatives of Khaled from Nablus said to me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin as well as the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who all had disappeared for a few days and returned by night, dead and autopsied," writes author Donald Boström in his report.

Boström's article makes a link to the recent exposure of an alleged crime syndicate in New Jersey. The syndicate includes several American rabbis, and one Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, who faces charges of conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant. ...

But the liberal Sydsvenskan - southern Sweden's major daily - had harsh criticism for the rival paper, running an opinion piece under the headline "Antisemitbladet" (a play on the name Aftonbladet).

"We have heard the story before, in one form or the other. It follows the traditional pattern of conspiracy theory: a great number of loose threads that the theorist tempts the reader to tie into a neat knot without having been provided with any proven connection whatsoever," writes leading columnist Mats Skogkär of Sydsvenskan.

"Whispers in the dark. Anonymous sources. Rumors. That is all it takes. After all we all know what they [the Jews] are like, don't we: inhuman, hardened. Capable of anything," the opinion piece says. "Now all that remains is the defense, equally predictable: 'Anti-Semitism' No, no, just criticism of Israel."

Read full coverage of this story in Ha'aretz.

This latest blood libel joins an all too long list of false charges and accusations against Israel and the IDF and would not look out of place on a neo-Nazi website or the pages of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

While this article may have been published in Swedish, previous experience shows that even such outlandish stories take on a life of their own as translations appear on the Internet preserved for Israel's enemies to dig up in the battle to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state.

Even though credible rebuttals may appear, as was the case with the Jenin "massacre" and The Independent's "secret uranium bombs" (see HonestReporting'sBig Lies interactive resource), these stories continue to fester online and, sadly, it is likely to be the case with Aftonbladet's disgraceful article.

Such a disgusting excuse for journalism is bound to create outrage. While understandable, we ask that your e-mails to Aftonbladet's Editor-in-Chief Jan Helin - jan.helin@aftonbladet.se - are as considered as possible under the circumstances and do not descend to the gutter level that this "newspaper" has sunk. Demand a retraction and an apology so that this story does not go unchallenged and unanswered.

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