[Igor Antunov]

Israel has admitted that in the 1990s, its forensic pathologists harvested organs from dead bodies, including Palestinians, without permission of their families.

The issue emerged with publication of an interview with the then-head of Israel's Abu Kabir forensic institute, Dr. Jehuda Hiss. The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic, who released it because of a huge controversy last summer over an allegation by a Swedish newspaper that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. Israel hotly denied the charge.

Parts of the interview were broadcast on Israel's Channel 2 TV over the weekend. In it, Hiss said, "We started to harvest corneas ... Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family."

The Channel 2 report said that in the 1990s, forensic 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.

In a response to the TV report, the Israeli military confirmed that the practice took place. "This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer," the military said in a statement quoted by 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."

Many of the details in the interview first came to light in 2004, when Hiss was dismissed as head of the forensic institute because of irregularities over use of organs there. Israel's attorney general dropped criminal charges against him, and Hiss still works as chief pathologist at the institute. He had no comment on the TV report.

Complaints against the institute, where autopsies of dead bodies are performed, at the time of Hiss' dismissal came from relatives of Israeli soldiers and civilians as well as Palestinians. The bodies belonged to people who died from various causes, including diseases, accidents and Israeli-Palestinian violence, but there has been no evidence to back up the claim in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that Israeli soldiers killed Palestinians for their organs. Angry Israeli officials called the report "anti-Semitic."

The academic, Nancy Sheppard-Hughes, a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, said she decided to make the interview public in the wake of the Aftonbladet controversy, which raised diplomatic tensions between Israel and Sweden and prompted Sweden's foreign minister to call off a visit to the Jewish state.

Sheppard-Hughes said that while Palestinians were "by a long shot" not the only ones affected by the practice in the 1990s, she felt the interview must be made public now 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."

While insisting that all organ harvesting was done with permission, Israel's Health Ministry told Channel 2, "The guidelines at that time were not clear." It added, "For the last 10 years, Abu Kabir has been working according to ethics and Jewish law."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... QD9CN62LO2

[grassroots1]

And I took A LOT of shit earlier this year for even maintaining that a story like this MIGHT be true.

Maybe pro-Israeli warriors need to take a look at prejudices they have committed themselves to.

[ThereBeDragons]

"Personally, I wouldn't have given a shit, but the Swedish government SHOULD apologise. This happened within its territories, and is fully under their responsibility. There's no reason for them not to say "We're sorry, we're not aligned with this none-sense and apologise for any concern it might have given you", or something to that effect. They REFUSED, which shows SUPPORT of this antisemitic publication."

"The accusations that Palestinians are killed for their organs, or that organs are removed from Palestinians who are killed otherwise, is just so ludicrous and unbelievable that I am surprised you would lend it any credence."

"The only thing that connects the two unrelated affairs, 17 years apart, is: CONSPIRING JEWS. And this is why the article is anti-semitic, and a blood libel of the worst kind. This article is not about organ harvesting: it is about the conspiring jews and their zionist plan to control the world. And this is what made us in Israel so furious about it."

[Douglas]

Oh this isn't very nice at all but.. at least they were dead, certain nations don't have that kind of patience. Also while technically accurate it seems that the term "organ" here has been used to inflame anger and thoughts of kidneys, hearts and lungs when "skin, corneas, heart valves and bones"

Alright it still ain't good but many countries now have implied consent. It's a breach of medical ethics and domestic law but it ain't no war crime.

[Nets]

The thread title isn't really accurate, as Israel itself was not removing organs without consent, but this one hospital was.

Moreover, this is no revelation. Hiss was found out and removed by the authorities for removing organs and selling them to research institutes.

This doesn't come close to the Aftonbladet article which said Palestinians were being killed for their organs for transplants.

[grassroots1]

This doesn't come close to the Aftonbladet article which said Palestinians were being killed for their organs for transplants.

In which you verbally harassed me for saying that the article might have credence. I can't seem to locate that thread, but maybe you know where it is?

[danholo]

The article still hasn't credence. Posting bullshit in order to libel people is disgusting. They distorted the truth without even bothering to check the facts. If they would've just bothered to do a little google search, this little debacle would've been avoided, but damage done: Jews harvest Palestinian organs. (so does every country where there is a Palestinian who accepted his organs to be donated.)

[QatzelOk]

This doesn't come close to the Aftonbladet article which said Palestinians were being killed for their organs for transplants.

Exactly.

Sure, Israel kills a lot of Palestinians. And yes, Israel sometimes tears the internal organs out of dead Palestinians.

But to suggest that the Israeli state would stoop to killing Palestinians so the state could harvest internal organs from children... that's just not something we read or see in commercial media. We're not used to this idea, whereas we understand how the Quran leads to wars with innocent neighbors and foreign empires.

[Bosnjak]

This is the tip of the Iceberg.