Israel 'stealing organs' from bodies in Gaza, alleges rights group

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said on Sunday it had “concerns” about possible organ theft from Palestinian corpses, following reports by medical professionals in Gaza who examined some bodies after they were released by Israel.

Medical professionals reportedly found vital organs, such as livers, kidneys and hearts, alongside cochleas and corneas, were missing, which the Euro-Med Monitor called “evidence” of potential organ theft.

They also claimed Israel exhumed and confiscated corpses from a mass grave that was dug more than 10 days ago in a courtyard at al-Shifa.

Israel has previously denied harvesting organs from dead Palestinians without the consent of families, calling such accusations “antisemitic”.

jordanlund,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

This is another one of those stories (like the “40 beheaded babies!”) that seems awfully suspicious. Please don’t take stories like this at face value.

Organs only remain viable for so many hours after death, so the idea of digging up a mass grave for organs seems sus:

donoralliance.org/…/what-is-the-time-frame-for-tr…

SaltySalamander,
SaltySalamander avatar

Don't take any story at face value that comes out of a warzone.

jordanlund,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

TRUTH! ^

name_NULL111653,

Правда! ^

Linkerbaan,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

They did this stuff in until at least 1990 and admitted to it though. It doesn’t directly confirm these new allegations but there’s a precedent…

newsweek.com/israel-organ-harvesting-allegations-…

The release of Scheper-Hughes’ recording was in response to an article by Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. The publication featured interviews with Palestinians who alleged that young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip were being killed by the Israeli military and their bodies returned with organs missing. Its content was condemned by many leaders and journalists across the world.

“Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family,” Hiss said.

The Israeli military confirmed that organ harvesting took place, but that it ended in the 1990s.

jordanlund,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

From that article:

“While the content Hadid shared is based on facts established following a leak to an Israeli news source in 2009, her post did not include information such as when the allegations were made or how authorities responded.

While there are no reports that such a practice has happened in Gaza or the West Bank, the established history risks being folded into misinformed or misleading claims.”

So, yeah, take it with a pound of salt.

We’ll probably get the full story in a few weeks, but given what we know about organ viability, I don’t see how “organ harvesting” is going to be a thing here. Certainly not for live patients.

Hyperreality,

Agreed on the pinch of salt.

I googled middle east monitor:

Their 'director of strategies' is Maha Hussaini, a Gazan journalist who's previously worked for Middle-East Eye. That's a newspaper which is alleged to have ties to Qatar and a pro-Muslim Brotherhood / Hamas bias.

Their founder and chairman is Ramy Abdu, also a Gazan. He's previously worked for the Council for European Palestinian Relations, which has been alleged to be a lobby group for the Hamas government in Gaza.

Obviously they'd deny this.

Linkerbaan,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

theguardian.com/…/israeli-pathologists-harvested-…

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.”

AnneBonny,

I don’t imagine a lot of people killed by 2000 pound bombs are great for harvesting organs.

themeatbridge, (edited )

That was exactly my thought. Even corneas will begin to degrade if the body is not refrigerated relatively quickly. Not to mention, organs need to be matched by blood type and potentially even MHC typing.

In the United States, to transplant a heart, the donor must be brain dead. The transplant surgeons will clamp the aorta and pour ice directly into the chest cavity to make sure there is no warm ischemic time. Liver and kidneys are more tolerant, but there’s no way someone killed in a war zone would go on to be an organ donor. The transplant surgeons would have to be following soldiers around with a centrifuge and a PCR machine to be taking kidneys from the dead.

Now they could be recovering the organs for other purposes. Researchers will buy deceased organs, although reputable ones require the appropriate paperwork.

jaybone,

Lol if a corpse is already buried the organs are useless.

Unless they are sending teams of ambulances in directly after bombs kill these people, in order to rush the bodies to a medical facility where they can extract the organs properly, the organs are useless.

This is such bullshit.

Linkerbaan,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

So why is israel stealing bodies from a hospital then?

NoSpiritAnimal,
@NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world avatar

Quit muddying the waters Hasbara, that’s not what the article says.

Israel has long been accused of harvesting organs Reports have circulated in recent years that Israel is unlawfully using Palestinian corpses.

In her book Over Their Dead Bodies, Israeli doctor Meira Weiss claimed organs were taken from dead Palestinians between 1996 and 2002 and used in medical research at Israeli universities and transplanted into Israeli patients’ bodies.

Jewish teachings permit organ transplantation and harvesting, with the need to save lives paramount over all other religious commandments.

A controversial Israeli television investigation in 2014 included confessions from high-ranking officials that skin was taken from the bodies of dead Palestinians and African workers to treat Israelis, such as soldiers with burn injuries.

In it, the director of the Israeli Skin Bank revealed the country’s reserve of “human skin” reached 17 square meters - a huge number relative to Israel’s population.

Israel is thought to be the biggest hub for the illegal global trade in human organs, according to a 2008 investigation by the American CNN network.

Euro-Med Monitor claimed Israel is one of the "world’s biggest hubs for the illegal trade of human organs under the pretext of ‘security deterrence’”.

It urged the country to abide by “international law” and reiterated the “necessity of respecting and protecting the bodies of the dead during armed conflicts.”

The 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which Israel has not ratified, requires combatants to respect the dignity of the dead, including preventing despoiling, mutilation, or any disrespectful treatment of their bodies.

Palestinian bodies reportedly being withheld by Israeli forces

Euro-Med also accused Israel of holding the remains of dozens of Palestinians killed during its military operation in Gaza since 7 October, though some have been handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

This is considered by some a punitive practice to deny families the chance of burying their loved ones.

Israel has a long history of holding onto the bodies of dead Palestinians, Euro-Med Monitor said.

andrew_bidlaw,

Euro-Mediterranian HRM is run by Ramy Abdu, who wikipedia calls a Palestinian financial expert born in Gaza, and have an HQ in Switzerland. This NCO is explicitly built to talk about Gaza, destroy stereotypes etc. And although I don’t know of their previous campaigns that much, but that one opinions drags them through a mud alright. May as well be a HAMAS project, as ‘financial expert’ from Gaza sounds a little bit fishy. I won’t put that accusation as true, but they aren’t in any sense an independent org as they are completely involved in that conflict. And even if for a good intention to save more Gazans and tell their story, they are now telling us without blinking that organ transplants are possible in unsanitary military contexts, and that’s an obvious propaganda to get likes. And what’s even worse Euronews cites them as a reputable source. There’s no need to overestimate what Israel does do Gaza, fuckers, you only weaponize anti-Gazan propaganda with such claims.

Mammal,
@Mammal@lemmy.world avatar

Gonna call shenanigans on this.

Bombs shatter organs - even when the victim isn’t in the blast-radius. Heck, just the sonic booms from fighter-jets can (and do) trigger miscarriages. Organs that are crushed, riddled with shrapnel, and probably close to the consistency of oatmeal are not worth the risks of retrieval.

Linkerbaan,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

Not everyone is bombed to rubble. Many corpses would even be in cold storage, or fresh because the IDF has also executed people at point blank.

Since the IDF has a ton of casualties right now it’s not that far fetched that they would steal some human supplies for their own surgeries.

A pinch of salt is recommended but since israel isn’t allowing international journalists into Gaza it’s very difficult to have complete independent verification on any of their accused war crimes.

Deceptichum,
Deceptichum avatar

I’m an organ donor and my understanding is that after I die, there’s a relatively small window of time to harvest any usable organs?

Surely a 10 day old corpse being dug up is completely useless for organ harvesting.

Funwayguy,
@Funwayguy@lemmy.world avatar

Is it just me or are these stories getting a little bit ‘competitive’ on the worst possible accusations with lessening citations. All I could find on this are 15+yr old articles and Instagram/Tiktok influencers.

Linkerbaan,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

The source mentioned in the article is euro med monitor, an NGO human rights watch organisation. I’m not sure they qualify as “TikTok influencers”.

euromedmonitor.org

jordanlund,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

It’s possible there’s something else going on. I would buy “corpse desecration” before I’d buy “organ harvesting”.

Even reliable organizations can be decieved, see the Kuwaiti baby incubator story, which was picked up by Amnesty International before it was debunked:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

WidowsFavoriteSon,

Antisemitism at its finest. And y’all are lapping it up.

osarusan,
osarusan avatar

All the comments I see in this thread are being critically skeptical of the claims in the article, not "lapping it up."

What are you seeing that I'm not?

mildlyusedbrain,

He is seeing the exact same shit but wants to make conflate things so that when people post pro-Isreali propaganda it’s “both sides are the same”

kusuriya,
@kusuriya@infosec.pub avatar

cool story bro

SaltySalamander,
SaltySalamander avatar

Fuck the Israeli government. Nothing but fucking new-age Nazis.

cowfodder,

The apartheid state known as Israel ≠ Judaism

RickRussell_CA,
@RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, but THIS specific claim echoes the medieval concept of “blood libel”.

NoneOfUrBusiness,

No? It echoes that one thing they did until the 90s where they actually literally stole organs from Gazan corpses.

NoSpiritAnimal,
@NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world avatar

No one here read the article, which references a CNN report stating that Israel did this until at least 2014.

Fitik,
Fitik avatar

@cowfodder However Antisemitism is Antisemitism

@Linkerbaan @WidowsFavoriteSon

Pipoca,

Israel isn’t Judaism.

But if you take an old antisemetic trope and paper over the word “Jew” with “Israel” or “zionist”, its still pretty antisemetic.

Antisemites can be anti-zionist or pro-zionist. Neither absolves them of their antisemitism.

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