COOK: The Missing Link in Israeli Organ Theft?” September 6, 2009

The autopsy surgeon Aftonbladet forgot

by Jonathan Cook  -  CounterPunch  – 4-6 September 2009

The hyperventilating by Israel’s leaders [1] over a story published in a Swedish newspaper last month [2] suggesting that the Israeli army assisted in organ theft from Palestinians has distracted attention from the disturbing allegations made by Palestinian families that were the basis of the article’s central claim.

The families’ fears that relatives, killed by the Israeli army, had body parts removed during unauthorized autopsies performed in Israel have been overshadowed by accusations of a “blood libel” directed against the reporter, Donald Bostrom, and the Aftonbladet newspaper, as well as the Swedish government and people.

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 criticized for the flimsy evidence he produced in support of his inflammatory story. Certainly there is much to criticize 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 unauthorized 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. [3]

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.

Bostrom’s article highlighted the case of one Palestinian, 19-year-old Bilal Ahmed Ghanan, from the village of Imatin in the northern West Bank, who was killed in 1992. A shocking picture of Bilal’s stitched-up body accompanied the report. [4]

Bostrom has told the Israeli media that he knows of at least 20 cases of families claiming that the bodies of loved ones were returned with body parts missing, [5] although he did not say whether any of these alleged incidents occurred more recently.

In 1992, the year in question, Bostrom says, the Israeli army admitted to him that it took away for autopsy 69 of the 133 Palestinians who died of unnatural causes. The army has not denied this part of his report.

A justifiable question from the families relayed by Bostrom is: why did the army want the autopsies carried out? Unless it can be shown that the army intended to conduct investigations into the deaths — and there is apparently no suggestion that it did — the autopsies were unnecessary.

In fact, they were more than unnecessary. They were counterproductive if we assume that the army has no interest in gathering evidence that could be used in future war crimes prosecutions of its soldiers. Israel has a long track record of stymying investigations into Palestinian deaths at the hands of its soldiers, and carried on that ignoble tradition in the wake of its recent assault on Gaza.

Of even greater concern for the Palestinian families is the fact that at around the time the bodies of their loved ones were whisked off by the army for autopsy, the only institute in Israel that conducts such autopsies, Abu Kabir, near Tel Aviv, was almost certainly at the centre of a trade in organs that later became a scandal inside Israel.

Equally disturbing, the doctor behind the plunder of body parts, Prof Yehuda Hiss, appointed director of the Abu Kabir institute in the late 1980s, has never been jailed despite admitting to the organ theft and he continues to be the state’s chief pathologist at the institute.

Hiss was in charge of the autopsies of Palestinians when Bostrom was listening to the families’ claims in 1992. Hiss was subsequently investigated twice, in 2002 and 2005, over the theft of body parts on a large scale.

Allegations of Hiss’ illegal trade in organs was first revealed in 2000 by investigative reporters at the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, which reported that he had “price listings” for body parts and that he sold mainly to Israeli universities and medical schools. [6]

Apparently undeterred by these revelations, Hiss still had an array of body parts in his possession at Abu Kabir when the Israeli courts ordered a search in 2002. Israel National News reported at the time: “Over the past years, heads of the institute appear to have given thousands of organs for research without permission, while maintaining a ‘storehouse’ of organs at Abu Kabir.” [7]

Hiss did not deny the plunder of organs, admitting that the body parts belonged to soldiers killed in action and had been passed to medical institutes and hospitals in the interests of advancing research. Understandably, however, the Palestinian families are unlikely to be satisfied with Hiss’ explanation. If the wishes of a soldier’s familiy were disregarded by Hiss, why not Palestinian families’ wishes too?

Hiss was allowed to continue as director of Abu Kabir until 2005 when allegations of a trade in organs surfaced again. On this occasion Hiss admitted to having removed parts from 125 bodies without authorization. Following a plea bargain with the state, the attorney general decided not to press criminal charges and Hiss was given only a reprimand. [8] He has continued as chief pathologist at Abu Kabir.

It should also be noted, as Bostrom points out, that in the early 1990s Israel was suffering from an acute shortage of organ donors to the extent that Ehud Olmert, health minister at the time, launched a public campaign to encourage Israelis to come forward.

This offers a possible explanation for Hiss’ actions. He may have acted to help make up the shortfall.

Given the facts that are known, there must be at least a very strong suspicion that Hiss removed organs without authorisation from some Palestinians he autopsied. Both this issue, and the army’s possible role in supplying him with corpses, needs investigation.

Hiss is also implicated in another long-running and unresolved scandal from Israel’s early years, in the 1950s, when the children of recent Jewish immigrants to Israel from Yemen were adopted by Ashkenazi couples after the Yeminite parents had been told that their child had died, [9] usually after admission to hospital.

After an initial cover-up, the Yeminite parents have continued pressing for answers from the state, and forced officials to reopen the files. [8] The Palestinian families deserve no less.

However, unlike the Yemenite parents, their chances of receiving any kind of investigation, transparent or otherwise, look all but hopeless.

When Palestinian demands for justice are not backed by investigations from journalists or the protests of the international community, Israel can safely ignore them.

It is worth remembering in this context the constant refrain from Israel’s peace camp that the brutal, four-decade occupation of the Palestinians has profoundly corrupted Israeli society.

When the army enjoys power without accountability, how do Palestinians, or we, know what soldiers are allowed to get away with under cover of occupation? What restraints are in place to prevent abuses? And who takes them to task if they do commit crimes?

Similarly, when Israeli politicians are able to cry “blood libel” or “anti-semitism” when they are criticised, damaging the reputations of those they accuse, what incentive do they have to initiate inquiries that may harm them or the institutions they oversee? What reason do they have to be honest when they can bludgeon a critic into silence, at no cost to themselves?

This is the meaning of the phrase “Power corrupts”, and Israeli politicians and soldiers, as well as at least one pathologist, demonstrably have far too much power — most especially over Palestinians under occupation.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

References

[1] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1109437.html
[2] http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=8390&lg=en
[3] http://www.slate.com/id/2223559/
[4] http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab
[5] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3766093,00.html
[6] http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1173179
[7] http://www.israelfaxx.com/webarchive/2002/01/2fax0104.html
[8] http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/90518
[9] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/israel-seeks-lost-children-of-yemen-exodus-1318037.html

LINK: http://www.counterpunch.org/cook09042009.html

Postscript - This story was first offered to the Guardian’s Comment is Free site.
It was received on August 26 by Brian Whitaker, a commissioning editor at CiF and
a former Middle East editor of the newspaper, who responded that “we’re minded
to use it” but that because the issue was “a hot potato” it would take “a day or two”
to decide.

On September 3, more than a week later, Georgina Henry, CiF’s executive editor,
replied, apologising for the delay but saying she was going to reject the piece.
Her strange reasoning led to a short but revealing correspondence. I include it here
for anyone interested. – Jonathan Cook

The Guardian shows its mettle
A brief correspondence with the editor of Comment is Free
Jonathan Cook, September 4, 2009

Liberal journalists in our mainstream media are always outraged at any
suggestion that their reports or views are in any way influenced by the threat
of retaliation from powerful interests. Students of the media are taught
that in Western democracies journalists on serious newspapers seek the truth
and, except in the case of the odd bad apple, refuse to submit to intimidation.
Israel offers a particularly interesting test case in this regard.

In reality, the fear of being labelled anti-Semitic is for most journalists
a powerful deterrent to engaging in strong criticism of Israel. Israel and its
supporters are only too aware of the power they have, which is why, when
mainstream publications step out of line by raising issues Israel would rather
were not examined, it leaps on them, flinging about the charge recklessly.
The orchestrated fury that greeted the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet’s
article in August 2009 about the Israeli army’s possible involvement in organ
theft was intended precisely to remind other media not to make a similar
mistake themselves.

The proper lesson for journalists to draw from the row over the Swedish
newspaper’s story was that, when one writes critically about Israel, one
should make sure to investigate the topic thoroughly, have a firm grasp of
the evidence and not push the argument beyond the limits of what can
reasonably be inferred. Those are worthy principles for any journalist to
follow (and ones that in this case Aftonbladet forgot to abide by), even if
they are more exacting requirements than those expected when writing about
most other countries. Think, for example, how deterred Western journalists
would be from following up a story that implicated the Venezuelan state in
the trafficking of peasants’ organs, even if Hugo Chavez expressed outrage
at the suggestion.

Unfortunately, however, the actual lesson of the Aftonbladet affair, the one
apparently intended for and digested by our media, is to keep quiet about
issues that Israel might get angry about.

A week after I submitted a commentary on the Aftonbladet story to the
Guardian’s Comment is Free website [above], its executive editor Georgina
Henry rejected it. Her reasoning, at least to a former Guardian journalist
like myself who worked many years on the paper’s foreign desk, seemed
more than strange and did not to accord with the newspaper’s usual criteria
for assessing either a news story or an opinion piece. Brian Whitaker,
who had first received the piece and is the paper’s former Middle East editor,
clearly like it and told me “we’re minded to use it”. But suggesting doubts
about whether his own judgment would accord with that of the site’s
executives, he warned that the issue was “a hot potato” and a decision would
have to wait because “a couple of people are on holiday”.

Baffled by the reasoning provided by Henry in her rejection email, I engaged
her in correspondence. Her initial willingness to respond looks generous but
actually is driven, I suspect, by the need to persuade me, a former Guardian
journalist, and herself that she is doing a reasonable thing in refusing my
article. My polite but irritating suggestions that her own words imply that
she is rejecting the piece not on its merits but out of fear of the expected
backlash, as well as my requests that she explain which facts in the story need
“100% independent verification” (a very unusual demand of an opinion
piece), quickly lead her to shut down the debate.

The correspondence offers, I think, some interesting insights into the
self-delusions of many of our leading liberal journalists, who desperately
need to believe that they are, as they claim, fearless in their pursuit of
truth.

The entire correspondence took place over 90 minutes on the evening of
September 3.

Georgina Henry: “Sorry about [the] delay getting back to you on this.
I’m sorry, but I’m not going to use this on Comment is free – i’m
reluctant to run what perhaps would be better done as straight news
rather than comment, which our own middle east correspondent hasn’t
checked out, on an issue as sensitive and as disputed as this. We’ve
also, as you know, run comment from Seth Freedman on the original
report by the Swedish newspaper, so we’ve already had a full debate on
the site. Sorry not to be more helpful.”

Note already here, and later in her correspondence, her references to CiF’s
inclusion of a piece by Seth Freedman [1] on the organ theft row. This is
intended as pre-emptory and decisive proof that she is not “scared” of the
Israel lobby and potential threats of anti-Semitism. Her implication is that
she and CiF took a brave decision in publishing Freedman’s article – or
possibly any article on the issue. But objectively it was the easiest option for
them to take. Publishing a piece by a Jew living in Israel, one who regularly
points out that he served in the Israeli army, saying that the Swedish report
was nonsense and poor journalism but that the Israeli leadership’s
accusations of anti-Semitism were misjudged and counter-productive is
hardly a daring or bold position to take.

Jonathan Cook: “Obviously you’re not going to be swayed from your
decision but the reasoning you’ve provided seems very strange indeed.
In Seth Freedman’s earlier piece, and in the debate among CiF readers,
there was absolutely no discussion of the evidence of possible
involvement in Palestinian organ theft of Prof Yehuda Hiss [Israel’s
chief pathologist] – the important contribution to this debate provided
by my piece. As for this being better done as a news report, how would
this be possible? The ‘news’ linking organ theft to Hiss is several
years old (even if it was widely ignored at the time) and would be of
absolutely no interest to a news editor now. Also, linking Hiss to the
story requires speculation, even if of the informed variety, that, while
being acceptable in commentary, is hardly the staple of the news pages.

“As for the topic being disputed and sensitive, well that’s precisely the
point, isn’t it? I’m trying to clarify the issues in dispute. By ‘sensitive’,
I assume you mean that the sensitivities of Israel requiring us to keep
this debate closed trump the senstitivities of the Palestinian families who
are still waiting nearly two decades on for answers about what
happened to their loved ones. It was ever thus.”

Georgina Henry: “It’s a sensitive issue, because it requires 100 per cent
satisfaction at our end that it will stand up to scrutiny. You will be the
first to accept that anything you write will be combed through minutely
by Israel supporters for evidence of bias and/or anti-semitism. For that
reason, everything about this story would have to be independently
checked by a Guardian reporter and I don’t have the resources on Cif to
do that. I can, as I said, put you in touch with Rory McCarthy, our
correspondent in Jerusalem, via the news desk.

“Please don’t jump to other conclusions like the worst of the conspiracy
theorists on the threads on the I/P articles we carry. I hardly think you
can accuse the Guardian or Comment is free of shying away from
controversy.”

In fact, I most certainly could make such an accusation but let’s save that
for another day and argument. Interesting that Henry now appears to
be suggesting that she is doing this for my benefit as anything I write will be
scrutinised by Israel’s supporters. Why is she more worried about my
reputation than I am? In addition, her comments again suggest that her
reasoning is being dictated by fears of the expected backlash.

Jonathan Cook: “On the issue of scrutiny, that was why I included the
links to the articles published in the Israeli media. Yehuda Hiss’
involvement in organ theft is beyond dispute, even if it was given
minimal coverage at the time. Interestingly, although it was reported by
Haaretz and others, Israel National News – the settlers’ news service -
gave it the most prominent coverage because Hiss was regarded as
having violated the sanctity of the Jewish body, as far as religious Jews
are concerned, in having removed organs from Jews before their burial.

“CiF’s motto is “Facts are sacred, comment is free”. That’s why I stuck
very strictly to the reported facts, easily verifiable by reading the
links from Israeli sources, and made the most cautious speculation
possible: that there are reasonable questions about what happened to
the bodies when they were autopsied; that the [Palestinian] families
deserve answers; but that they won’t get them because of the relations
of power under occupation. (Incidentally, and not a little ironically,
I also tried to make the point that we journalists often fail in our duty to
the Palestinians to investigate their claims, in this and other cases,
because we are more worried about Israel’s response than their rights).

“Also, I think the suggestion that I am arguing that there is any kind
of conspiracy going on here unfounded and inappropriate. In my view,
what’s going on here is that CiF is taking the easy option, avoiding
getting caught up in a row that has already engulfed another newspaper,
and choosing to turn a blind eye to an issue of Palestinian human rights.
That was doubtless the reason why Netanyahu and Lieberman leapt
on Aftonbladet in the first place.”

Georgina Henry: “your view’s wrong, actually. If i was trying to avoid
the row, I wouldn’t have run Seth’s piece. No matter though – like so
many people I deal with through Cif you’ve made your mind up about
my motives and it’s not worth corresponding further with you.

“The reality is that on this story I want independent verification by a
Guardian reporter of what you’ve written and I don’t, on Cif, have the
resources for that. I still believe that it is better handled by news, so by
all means contact the foreign news desk.”

She closes down further debate but not before salving her conscience by
reviving a suggestion that I had already argued was not feasible: rewriting
the piece as a news report. The verification argument is a red herring too.

Jonathan Cook: “I haven’t made up my mind: you’ve told me yourself.
This piece will be intensely scrutinised (because of Israel’s intimidating
lobby) and you therefore need a standard of proof – 100% independent
verification, as you say – before publishing my informed commentary on
this issue. If such standards were applied to other issues on CiF, nothing
would get published at all on the site. There can be only one reasonable
inference from your remarks: that you think this story is too hot to
handle. If you can offer any other reasonable interpretation, I’d be
delighted to hear it.

“You could instead have told me what facts still need verifying despite
the links from established Israeli sources I supplied. I could then see
whether it is possible to provide satisfactory proof. Certainly, I’m
struggling to work out what the problem is myself. It is reported all over
the Israeli media that Hiss admitted organ theft on a massive scale,
and that he was Abu Kabir’s pathologist through the 1990s. The army
admitted to Aftonbladet, and no one has claimed otherwise in all the
row about the story, that it carried out many autopsies on Palestinians
in the early 1990s. It is widely reported in the Israeli media that all such
autopsies are carried out at Abu Kabir, where Hiss was the pathologist
(Rory can confirm this last point in a minute for you). The rest of it
is educated and informed speculation and opinion, which by definition
cannot be verified.

“Also, it should be pointed out that, even regarding the ‘facts’ included
in this piece, it is not necessary that they be proved beyond any doubt.
I am relying on credible reports from established Israeli sources about
what they say happened in a police investigation. (The kind of evidence
Guardian journalists use every day in writing their reports, by the
way.) In the extremely unilkely event that any of those reports turned
out all these years later to be wrong, that would not damage either my
or CiF’s reputation. We would still have made a reasonable argument -
that the families’ plausible claims need investigating – in good faith
based on the available credible evidence.

“My problem with your response so far is that you are applying an
unreasonable threshold of proof on this issue – one that could never be
reached by a piece of commentary.”*

Henry did not reply again. Paradoxically, a short time later, the Forward,
American Jewry’s establishment newspaper, published a commentary piece [2]
confirming all the facts that Henry believed needed verifying.

Links
1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/24/israel-blood-libel-aftonbladet-organ-harvesting
2.  http://www.forward.com/articles/112915/

http://www.jkcook.net/Articles3/0419.htm#Top

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