The New "Blood Libel"?
August 30, 2009 - 3:56pm
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Syndicate
Organ Donation and Theft in Contemporary Jewish Folklore
http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/08/30/gilad-atzmon-organ-donation-and...
Fro the "Counterpunch" article:
In the article, "Our sons plundered for their organs," veteran journalist Donald Bostrom writes that Palestinians "harbor strong suspicions against Israel for seizing young men and having them serve as the country's organ reserve - a very serious accusation, with enough question marks to motivate the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to start an investigation about possible war crimes."1/
...An army of Israeli officials and apologists immediately went into high gear, calling both Bostrom and the newspaper's editors "anti-Semitic." The Israeli foreign minister was reportedly "aghast" and termed it "a demonizing piece of blood libel." An Israeli official called it "hate porn."
Commentary magazine wrote that the story was "merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of European funded and promoted anti-Israel hate." Numerous people likened the article to the medieval "blood libel," (widely refuted stories that Jews killed people to use their blood in religious rituals). Even some pro-Palestinian writers joined in the criticism, expressing skepticism....
Indeed, even Babble saw fit to haughtily terminate discussion of the issue. I am glad that Counterpunch saw fit to dig a little more.
Indeed, even Babble saw fit to haughtily terminate discussion of the issue.
That would be this thread, for the record.
Well, not to derail this thread, but organ theft in war isn't exactly a new issue in this modern world of ours. I think we can all remember the Serbian allegations into Kosovar organ theft during the 98-99 period of the war.
http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-wire/2009/08/03/serbs-claim-of-koso...
New York Times article via St. Louis Times.
Also links in this thread
Bostrom's article lacks credibility for a number of reasons. In the opening paragraph he tells the story of Levy Rosenbaum, a Jewish man in New York linked to illegal trafficking in human organs with counterparts in Israel. While Rosenbaum has admitted to buying organs from destitute Israelis, until now there has been nothing outside Bostrom's article to suggest that this trade involved the organs of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army.
Rosenbaum has also admitted to being involved in the trade for the past ten years which is well after 1992, when Bostrom claims the organ theft may have occurred in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Other than Israel being involved, there is no evidence to make a direct link between these incidents. It is poor journalism on Bostrom's part to use a timely event and try to connect it to something that happened nearly two decades earlier without offering any evidence.
Bostrom also refers to Palestinians disappearing for days at a time and who have in many cases returned dead. This is known to have occurred before, especially Palestinians being arrested and taken to detention centers without the Israeli authorities bothering to inform the families. This is something that has been reported on and documented by numerous Palestinian human rights organizations. Israel may have even performed autopsies on the bodies without the families' consent, as Bostrom reports. He publishes a horrific photograph of one of these bodies alongside the article, but again, this is not proof that organs in that person's body were removed and sold, or given to Israelis in need, as the author implies.
One must also ask why this story was not covered in 1992, when Bostrom claims the organ theft occurred. It seems this would be a more appropriate time to expose such a story when bodies of those killed by Israel could have been autopsied to determine for a fact whether or not organs from those Palestinians killed by Israel were in fact removed.
Matthew Cassel, The Electronic Intifada
Excellent article - thanks, M. Spector. I'm also looking at his blog, which looks to be worth reading.
It is good; I got the link from HERE.
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 criticised for the flimsy evidence he produced in support of his inflammatory story. Certainly there is much to criticise 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 unauthorised 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.
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.
Jonathan Cook
Palestinian Government Committee to Follow up 'Organ Harvest' Issue;
http://www.imemc.org/article/61565