Top Sweden newspaper says IDF kills Palestinians for their organs

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-leaning Aftonbladet, which devoted a double spread in its cultural section to the article.

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.

more...

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1108384.html

I expect the state of Israel to take these credible and trustworthy eyewitness accusations by a leading Swedish paper seriously. It's just a matter of time before Amnesty Int'l, HRW, and the UN call for investigations. Hopefully serious people like the Goldstone Commission or Richard Falk will give this the international attention it so rightfully deserves. No cover-ups and white-washing this time, Israel! These are SERIOUS human rights violations!

:sarcasm:

a bunch of Rabbis did get caught up in an organ selling scheme here in the US. Maybe that's where they got them?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32103250/

http://www.slate.com/id/2223559/

http://www.theweek.com/article/index/98972/Rabbis_and_organ_trafficking

and blood extracted in those illegal operations are probably used in matzah baking.

:eyes:

:sarcasm:

and what's with HRW and AI's silence?

Why hasn't there been a special UN meeting on this one yet?

Why does Israel always get away with stuff like this? GOSH!

all the same to me cuz i ain't never even been to Canadia!

The Globe

Aftonbladet

Aftonbladet (Swedish for The Evening Sheet) is a Swedish tabloid founded by Lars Johan Hierta in 1830 during the modernization of Sweden. Today the newspaper labels itself as independent Social Democrat and is the largest daily newspaper in Nordic countries (according to Tidningsstatistik AB, a Swedish statistics company). Aftonbladet is owned by the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) and Norwegian media group Schibsted. In 2006 the paper had 1,425,000 daily readers (Orvesto research 2005:2), circa 15% of the Swedish population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftonbladet

The best-selling newspaper in the UK is The Sun...

Aftonbladet is noted for its circulation, but not - a cursory search on the internet suggests - for the quality of its journalism...

Unfortunately, such tabloids do spread a lot of racist propaganda. In the UK, antisemitism in such tabloids is relatively low at present - but there is plenty of racism against immigrants, Muslims and Gypsies. And antisemitism would CERTAINLY make an instant comeback in the tabloids if there were ever again a significant number of Jewish would-be asylum seekers here. The Daily Mail serialized the 'Protocols' in the 1930s. Its attitude to refugees hasn't changed much over the years, though the specific targets vary according to where the current wave of refugees/immigrants comes from.

Isn't the Guardian basically a tabloid too?

It's printed in Berliner format, but in terms of content it's arguably the most broadsheety of the English papers, and among those with the higherst journalistic standards.

And just because something left-leaning doesn't mean it isn't a rag - I refer you to the Mirror and the Star in the UK, and I'm sure there are opposite numbers in the US.

and does tend to be rather tabloid-esque

James Hacker: “Don’t tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country, the Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country, the Times is read by the people who actually do run the country, the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country, the Financial Times is read by the people who own the country, the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it already is.”

Sir Humphrey: “Well, Prime Minister, what about people who read the Sun?”

Bernard Woolley: “Sun readers don’t care who runs the country, as long as she’s got big tits."

The Morning Star is the official papaer of a British communist party (I can't remember which), and has, especially these days, a miniscule readership; while the Daily Star, which is often just called 'the Star', and is undoubtedly what DIR was refering to like that, is more obsessed with tits, and with les actual news in it, than even The Sun.

Here's their web page, if you want to see what they're like - the first page looks safe for work, but I won't vouch for any pages after that (and with titles like 'Video Vixens', it's pretty certain some of their pages will be NSFW): http://www.dailystar.co.uk/home/

I presumed the "left-wing" reference must have meant that Donald was referring to the Morning Star, which is certainly on the left. The wikipedia page for that other paper indicates that its non-tits-and-arse coverage tends to be on the right.

The Daily Mirror is our (comparatively) left-leaning tabloid. Not as vicious as the Hate-Mail or Sun, but not to be relied on, either.

dumping them at sea from an aircraft like we have.

Able bodied men being picked up from the street all over the world decade after decade.

We put them in prisons, we bomb them, massacre them, experiment with them, drop them from aircraft.

Death, not money, is more important to our past leaders and their CIAs, except there is a value in not having to fight court cases with real dead body evidence.

What does the ACLU say. Do they look at this type of operational accusation?

gad. that someone here doesn't know what the ACLU is, is shocking. And no reputable human rights organization has ever made such a charge or even close to it.

It's ridiculous bullshit for the idiots.

NEW YORK - In 2005, a rebellious and sporadically employed Israeli man flew to New York to give up a kidney to save an American businessman. For that, he says he was paid $20,000, which appeared in a brown envelope on his hospital bed after the operation.

That payoff would be illegal.

But the kidney donor, 39-year-old Nick Rosen of Tel Aviv, says that doesn't matter. "I smoke pot. That's also against the law."
Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here

Rosen believes he did a good deed and that organ donors like him should be compensated. Much of his story can be confirmed, and the case gives new resonance to claims that a black market for kidneys has thrived even in the United States.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32464069/ns/health-health_care/

I'm sure I could find 5 people in Israel that would say the Palestinians killed their son and ate them, that wouldn't make it fit to print.

Not even if I drag up a story of some Palestinian serial killer who ate corpses.

You're disgusting, you really are.

I think you owe me a huge apology!

Blood libel? Because I posted a piece about an Israeli man who willing sold his kidney?

Otherwise why would you be posting that story here.

I'm asking what is your motive is in posting two completely unrelated stories in the same thread, what could the possible motive be besides linking those stories together?

This story is about an Israeli selling his *own* kidney on the American black market. Not about Israelis killing Palestinians for their organs, or for that matter *anyone* killing *anyone* for their organs. Very different.

interest.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1108384.html
(note the article links to the original article. in swedish. i don't speak swedish)

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-leaning Aftonbladet, which devoted a double spread in its cultural section to the article.
Advertisement

(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.

But without verification, I find it too bizarre, cold-blooded and horrific to believe.

kidneys heading to Israel, nothing is bizarre to me.

:popcorn:

http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab

Palestinier anklagar Israels armé för att stjäla kroppsdelar från sina offer.
Här berättar Donald Boström om den internationella transplantationsskandalen – och hur han själv blev vittne till övergrepp på en 19-årig pojke.

Translations:
Palestinians accuse the Israeli army to steal body parts from his victims.
It tells Donald Boström of the international transplant scandal - and how he himself became a witness to the assault on a 19-year-old boy.

I am what you might call a "match maker," said Levy Izhak Rosenbaum from Brooklyn, USA, in a secret recording with an FBI agent he thought was a customer. Ten days later, at the end of July this year Rosenbaum was arrested in connection with a large tangle of corruption uncovered in New Jersey: rabbis, elected and trusted officials had for years engaged in money laundering and illegal organ, which was now rolling up like a Soprano network. Rosenbaums matchmaking was allltså not about romance but about buying and selling kidneys from Israel on the black market. According to its own statement, he buys bodies from the needy people in Israel for 10 $ 000 and sell them to desperate patients in the U.S. for 160 $ 000. The legal waiting time for kidneys is an average of nine years.

The accusations have shaken the American transplant industry. If this is true, it is the first time organ trafficking documented in the U.S., said experts in the magazine New Jersey Real-Time News.

Asked how many bodies he has sold Rosenbaum responds: Quite a lot. Many. And I have never failed, he brags on. His business has been going on for a very long time.

More at link: http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab

Kinda creepy and, well, rather difficult to believe. Seems to me there's plenty of rational reasons for criticism regarding some of the policies surrounding Palestine without delving into this.

I bet Halliburton is in the human organ selling business.

That is what you're saying? Lots of people do it so OF COURSE YOU CAN BELIEVE THE ISRAELIS DO IT? Or did you mean some other clever thing?

:D

It was a report of allegations. Who knows if they are true or not? But are reporters supposed to only report on things they know as a fact? It is also news if people are saying such things.

Hoping someone will believe it?

i don't believe for a second that the IDF kills palestinians so they can harvest their organs.

i'm the OP by the way.

i *do* believe that the fact that a (theoretically) respectable newspaper would post such outrageous claims about israel with barely a scintilla of evidence is something that needs to be brought to light.

According to wiki it's a tabloid.

i did say (theoretically) respectable, since i already knew it was the LEADING daily newspaper in the nordic countries

but let's quote wiki in its entirety:Aftonbladet (Swedish for The Evening Sheet) is a Swedish tabloid founded by Lars Johan Hierta in 1830 during the modernization of Sweden. Today the newspaper labels itself as independent Social Democrat and is the largest daily newspaper in Nordic countries (according to Tidningsstatistik AB, a Swedish statistics company). Aftonbladet is owned by the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) and Norwegian media group Schibsted. In 2006 the paper had 1,425,000 daily readers (Orvesto research 2005:2), circa 15% of the Swedish population.

so, whether or not it is "respectable" which is of course a subjective assessment, we know it has (assuming wiki is accurate) 15% of the swedish population (which is a huge # for a newspaper cirtulation), it is almost 200 yrs old , and is the largest daily newspaper in the nordic countries.

so, whether or not it's "theoretically respectable:" it's cleary immensely influential, has a long history of publication, and has a broad readership, and is the leading newspaper in nordi countries.

so, yes... it is concerning.

in Nordic countries (according to Tidningsstatistik AB, a Swedish statistics company).

Aftonbladet is owned by the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) and Norwegian media group Schibsted. In 2006 the paper had 1,425,000 daily readers (Orvesto research 2005:2), circa 15% of the Swedish population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftonbladet

hint: its original & still current meaning has to do with the size of the pages, not "yellow" content.

the "fact" that it's a "tabloid" is irrelevant unless you know which definition of tabloid is meant.

which is why i posted info about the paper.

"A tabloid is an industry term which refers to a smaller newspaper format per spread;

to a weekly or semi-weekly alternative newspaper that focuses on local-interest stories and entertainment, often distributed free of charge (often in a smaller, tabloid-sized newspaper format);

or to a newspaper that tends to sensationalize and emphasize or exaggerate or sensational crime stories, gossip columns repeating scandalous and innuendos about the deeply personal lives of celebrities and sports stars, and other so-called "junk food news" or junk mail (often in a smaller, tabloid-sized newspaper format)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabloid

i presume you don't read swedish & never heard of the paper before this incident. i presume most folks here are the same. so i posted info about its ownership.

wtf is your problem?

to indicate paper that publishes unsubstantiated rumor and sensationalistic stories along witha lot of gossip. Got it, honey?

never heard of the paper before.

i posted information about the paper + link without comment on the story & you can go jump in the lake, darling.

genius. read the entire entry. And sorry, contemporary understanding of the term "tabloid" largely rests on the description I gave. duh.

definition, particularly in the news or publishing businesses (i.e. the business of those reporting this news about the story in the swedish paper).

99% of people on this board, including you & i, know nothing about swedish papers. i posted neutral, factual information about the ownership & circulation of the paper & you responded with a completely unwarranted personal attack.

pretty much your standard MO.

now go bother someone else.

Yes, I think it may be true because of the scandals already detailed here.

No, I think the Palestinians are misled by Israel's insistence (I assume Israel still does this, they did in the past in any event) on doing autopsies on any Palestinian killed by the IDF. That has long been thought to be a purely punitive measure against the Palestinians because of the prohibition against "defiling" a body after death in Islam, just as there is in Judaism. No reasonable person can think an autopsy is necessary when someone's been dropped in public by gunfire. But, the family gets the body at last, and it's been opened up, it's not a big leap to suspect it's even worse than it's being deliberately defiled.

to KNOW this, and to question further. not just to naively print these bald accusations about evul jooos stealing organs.

The Israelis keep the Palestinians under an eternal brutal military occupation, bulldoze their homes and farms at will, let illegal settlers take more and more Palestinian land and rampage in killing sprees through Palestinians villages, do ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, use them as target practice, and you think it's a stretch to consider this as well? Sounds right in character.

and says that it's ok to irresponsibly print unsubstantiated "blood libel" rumours about the IDF because you don't like israel's policies vis a vis the palestinians.

yea, that makes sense. if the enemy is evil enough, any lie is justified.

how orwellian.

Here's a current link to the Israelis forcing autopsies on Palestinians against the latter's religious beliefs:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iSYpeLo9EP1NAwa_SduklhjH4znAD9A62EFG0

I can also clearly remember a statement by an IDF official a decade or two ago "defending" autopsies being done on the Palestinians they killed, in order to be sure the IDF was responsible. (Like someone with six bullets in him had just coincidentally happened to die of pancreatic cancer, I guess.)

So, given the vicious brutality the IDF and Israel in general already shows to the Palestinians, and the documented organ traffic as in the article mentioned previously, you think this is a stretch? I think not. And reporting it is as responsible as reporting the Abu Ghraib rumors, which later turned out to be all too true.

And some older links showing the forced autopsies are an established practice:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/tp_annex2.asp
http://books.google.com/books?id=_dMihgtEnaAC&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=idf+OR+israel+autopsies+palestinians&source=bl&ots=Zkc_y7Xrn3&sig=TvtHToynhRLl85gRDd_tfalzQgE&hl=en&ei=_TGNSpmaJImCMe6RuMwK&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9#v=onepage&q=idf%20OR%20israel%20autopsies%20palestinians&f=false

I wonder if IDF soldiers killed are subjected to autopsies against their families wishes?

about Iraqi soldiers killing Kuwaiti babies was a stretch. That Hussein was a brutal dictator was true enough- just as the brutal occupation conducted by the Israelis is true enough, but believing anything because of it is an idiot's game, honey.

the Americans and British must be killing Iraqis and Afghanis for their organs?

And frankly, I think believing this idiot tabloid story is akin to the morans that believed that the Iraqis killed babies in incubators in Kuwait. The people believing this kind of crap are those who want to believe it. In other words they're, well, people who want to believe the most heinous things about those they consider their enemies. I suppose you also believe that the Israelis are smuggling libido boosting gum into Gaza to corrupt the youth.

Here in the NY-NJ area there has been a bizarre story about an Israeli organ ring operating in New York. IIRC, they would lure Russian immigrants who want to go from Russia to Israel by promising to pay their fares and arrange their papers. They would tell them to layover in NYC. In NYC they would hold the immigrants hostage and tell them that they had to donate an organ to pay for the rest of human trafficking costs. The organs were harvested at two of NY's premiere hospitals and the money was laundered by rabbis through Israeli charities.

Truly bizarre, but that's what has been in our newspapers.

Fucking incredible naivity

So if we see a report like this out of New Jersey, then hear of allegations from the Swedish paper, what is so naive about thinking that it could be a possibility?

It would be naive to think nobody would ever do such a horrible thing.

'Leading newspaper' is a misleading term; the Sun and Express and Daily Mail in the UK have a wide readership, but are not considered reliable and this seems to be in the same category.

Tabloids in general have a tendency to spread racist and xenophobic slanders. 'Left-leaning' is a relative term when it comes to such papers, and in any case says nothing about quality - the Mirror is well to the left of the Sun, but I still wouldn't trust the news reporting in either.

let's get accurate. not that i care about its politics, but since you brought it up.

according to wiki, they SELF DESCRIBE as social democrat.

i'll take them at their word.

they may be tabloid. tabloid is somewhat subjective. the fact that they are the largest daily and have FIFTEEN PERCENT of swedes as subscribers/purchasers means they are influential. iow this is not some tract printed in a basement and read by a few people. this paper has the largest circulation in nordic countries and is read by million s.

many places.

The tabloids could be regarded as the Europaean equivalent of the American talk-shows and 'hate radio.

The Sun has a readership of about 7,900,000. That's about 13% of the UK population. The Daily Mail has a readership of over 2,000,000. In practice the readership is a lot more than the official figures, because people share these papers, and they are readily available on display in waiting rooms and other public places.

They are fanatical in whipping up hate against immigrants, asylum-seekers, gypsies, and anyone who doesn't conform to a 'Little England' 1950s social norm. They continually claim that Britain is being 'flooded' with immigrants; that immigrants get all sorts of special privileges; etc. Much of it is plain lying. Richard Littlejohn, who writes for both the Sun and the Hate-Mail, has claimed that 2 million people leave the UK every year *because* of 'mass immigration'; that entire neighbourhoods have been 'ethnically cleansed' by immigration; that benefits for asylum seekers 'start at £180 a week' (actually they get less than £50 a week). A Polish organization successfully sued the Daily Mail for whipping up hate against Poles in Britain. Homophobia is also a feature. In 1988, a Sun editorial suggested that Britain is governed by a 'gay mafia' of 'a closed world of men with a mutual self-interest'.

It is thought that the tabloid hate-mongering does contribute to a significant amount of the violence that occurs here against immigrants and asylum-seekers.

Antisemitism is not a major feature right at the moment. But it *will* be if ever there are again a significant number of Jewish immigrants and asylum-seekers in Britain. In the 1930s, the Daily Mail supported the Nazis, serialized the Protocols, and published an article 'Hurrah for the Brownshirts'. (According to Wikipedia, this Swedish tabloid was pro-German in WW2.)

I don't think that Americans quite realize the pernicious and pervasive influence of the tabloids in Europe, just as Europaeans never quite realize the pernicious and pervasive influence of hate-radio in America. I was shocked at discovering the hate-radio influence, through reading DU.

thx

Fabulous, stay classy.

Why else the hysteria over the article, which may or may not be true? I can almost hear the screaming.

I think it's unlikely this story is true.

and that's precisely what your disgusting little post reflects.

Your post is every bit as bad as some foaming rabid crap about how Palestinian are all anti-semites. take your hate and shove it up the orifice you pulled it out of.

I really don't have the level of interest in this to have an argument and be called untrue things.
I surrender.
happy?

It's a bigoted statement, just as your original is. Secondly, you shouldn't make silly little assumptions. Not only do I listen to the BBC, I read Electronic Intifada and a wide range of sources about I/P. I'm firmly opposed to the Israeli occupation, the settlers and the current Israeli gov. You didn't specify that it was the gov't you were referring to. Not at all. You simply made the broad based claim that Israelis are racists and compared them ALL to the KKK. That's right. All. You didn't say some Israelis are the Israeli gov't. Your post was ugly. That's simply undeniable.

I don't know you from Adam, but stupid and hateful is just what you have exhibited here.

This is certainly the kind of thing they would go for

The author was only writing about allegations made by Palestinians, not swearing to their veracity.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/08/19/israel.sweden.organ.harvesting/index.html?iref=mpstoryview


Swedish paper's organ harvesting article draws Israeli outrage

By Tricia Escobedo

(CNN) -- Israel has expressed outrage about a Swedish newspaper article that called for an investigation into claims that Israeli soldiers may have harvested organs from dead Palestinians.

"The article was a shocking piece of blatant racism," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told CNN on Wednesday.

"This kind of medieval blood libel cannot be tolerated in any society and the Swedish public and government have to condemn and reject this appalling before it actually encourages someone to commit hate crimes."

Israel -- through its ambassador in Stockholm, Sweden -- is asking Sweden's government to condemn the article, Palmor said.

When contacted by CNN, Sweden's Foreign Office had no comment on the report, which was published Tuesday night, only saying that they "have free media" in Sweden.

But Sweden's ambassador to Israel rejected the article, saying Sweden's Embassy "cannot but clearly distance itself" from it.

The article was an op-ed written by freelance journalist Donald Bostrom, who has traveled to the Middle East numerous times. It was printed in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.

Bostrom, who spoke to CNN from Stockholm, said he has received several death threats about the opinion piece.

"What I'm doing in my article is giving a range of examples of very active organ trafficking going on ," he said.

He wrote the piece in reaction to a recently unveiled corruption scandal in New Jersey that allegedly involved the private sale of a kidney from a donor in Israel.

Bostrom stressed that he has no proof that Israeli soldiers were stealing organs, and that the purpose of his opinion article was to call for an investigation into numerous claims in the 1990s that such activity was going on. One of those claims is from the family of Bilal Ahmed Ghanem, a 19-year-old Palestinian man who was shot and killed in 1992, allegedly by Israeli forces, in the West Bank village of Imatin.

"I was present that night, I was a witness," Bostrom said.

He said Ghanem's body was taken away and returned several days later by the Israeli military with a cut in his midsection that had been stitched up. Ghanem's family said they believed that his organs had been removed.

After that incident, at least 20 Palestinian families told Bostrom that they suspected the Israeli military had taken the organs of their sons after they had been killed by Israeli forces, and their bodies taken away -- presumably for routine autopsies.

"I was in the West Bank 50 times in the early '90s when I experienced this," Bostrom said. "I think it should be further investigated."

In his op-ed, Bostrom calls on the International Court of Justice -- the principal judicial body of the United Nations -- to investigate the allegations.

There has been no official reaction to the claims from Palestinian leaders.

Bostrom said the families had offered to have the bodies exhumed in order to prove their claims that their relatives' organs had been taken.

He had arranged to investigate the claims -- along with a camera crew and a medical examiner -- for a television news piece. But he said the report was later scrapped because of the closure of the West Bank and Gaza, and Bostrom said no human rights groups were interested in investigating the claims.

The Israeli military routinely carries out autopsies on Palestinians killed by their forces, a point that Bostrom included in his article. Bostrom said he has doubts about the necessity of the procedures if it is clear how the person died.

A United Nations account said that Ghanem's death was investigated by the Israeli military, which concluded that Ghanem, who it said was 20 years old, "may have been killed when a group of reservists passing through the town opened fire in response to rocks being thrown at them."

Bostrom denied that Ghanem was throwing rocks at Israeli forces at the time of his death, saying he was wanted by Israel for a previous incident.

Bostrom was critical of comments from Sweden's ambassador to Israel, Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier, who called the article "as shocking and appalling to us Swedes, as it is to Israeli citizens."

But she noted that Sweden has a free press "just as in Israel," although it comes with "a certain responsibility."

That responsibility, the ambassador said, "falls on the editor-in-chief of any given newspaper."

Bostrom said the newspaper has stood by its decision to publish his article and he has not been contacted by the Swedish government.

But he has received hundreds of messages asking him to recant his position, or worse.

"I have an e-mail here ... saying, 'The Nazis should die and you will be next. We will meet you outside, you will be the next news very soon. Meet you outside," Bostrom said.

When asked if he was afraid, he said, "Yeah, I'm concerned."