Unconfirmed, but still... I think I just *gulp* threw up a little bit in my mouth...

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

Top Sweden newspaper says IDF kills Palestinians for their organs
By Morten Berthelsen and Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent
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.


(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.

Boström's article makes a link to the recent exposure of an alleged crime syndicate in New Jersey. The syndicate includes several American rabbis, and one Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, who faces charges of conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant.

(Click here for the opinion piece in Swedish)

Boström also cites an incident of alleged organ snatching from 1992, during the time of the first Palestinian intifada. He says that the IDF seized a young man known for throwing stones at Israeli troops in the Nablus area, who was shot in the chest, both legs, and the stomach before being taken to a military helicopter which transported him to "a place unknown to his loved ones".

Five nights later, Boström says, the young man's body was returned, wrapped in green hospital sheets.

"The sharp sounds from the shovels were mixed with the occasional laughter from the soldiers who were joking with each other, waiting to go home. When Bilal was put into his grave, his chest was revealed and suddenly it became clear to the present what abuse he had been put through. Bilal was far from the only one who was buried cut-up from his stomach to his chin and the speculations about the reason why had already started," he writes.

But the liberal Sydsvenskan - southern Sweden's major daily - had harsh criticism for the rival paper, running an opinion piece under the headline "Antisemitbladet" (a play on the name Aftonbladet).

"We have heard the story before, in one form or the other. It follows the traditional pattern of conspiracy theory: a great number of loose threads that the theorist tempts the reader to tie into a neat knot without having been provided with any proven connection whatsoever," writes leading columnist Mats Skogkär of Sydsvenskan.

"Whispers in the dark. Anonymous sources. Rumors. That is all it takes. After all we all know what they [the Jews] are like, don't we: inhuman, hardened. Capable of anything," the opinion piece says. "Now all that remains is the defense, equally predictable: 'Anti-Semitism' No, no, just criticism of Israel."

The Foreign Ministry reacted angrily on Tuesday to the report. Ministry spokesperson Yigal Palmor said the newspaper's decision to publish the story is "a mark of disgrace" for the Swedish press.

"In a democratic country, there should be no place for dark blood libels out of the Middle Ages of this type," Palmor said. "This is an article that shames Swedish democracy and the entire Swedish press."

A Foreign Ministry official said that Israel's embassy in Stockholm have communicated a harsh condemnation to the Swedish government and the newspaper itself.

Anna Ekström and Mikael Tossavainen contributed to this report

The biggest tragedy is that even if this comes out true, nothing will change in attitudes towards Israel.

Oh here we go again, with this "criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism" BS.

This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen written about this conflict. The IDF want to maintain Israel's territorial dominance. I find it incredibly unlikely that they also do some freelance grave-robbing on the side.

Most likely Hamas propaganda, designed to enrage the idiots. It sounds like a cheap horror film.

Right, because real life is so pleasant and innocent.

What are you on about? The West did some opportunistic organ harvesting in Yugoslavia. I don't see what is so unbelievable about this.

Now attack me for anti-Semitism.

I'd like to have this proven before I fully believe it. Why would Israel want Palestinian's organs?

Do you know what the street value of a fresh Liver is?

Perhaps the organs were removed during the autopsy rather than 'harvested'?

yeah this article has already been debunked. You can support palestine without being completely credulous to every blood-libel like story about israel.

You're onto something here. A few years ago a film was released that was very popular in the Arab and muslim world called 'Vallley of The Wolves.' It contained a jewish american doctor who harvested arab organs and sent them to america and israel.

This is not unbelievable actually, organ stealing happens a lot, especially in war.

Your so hardened and gruff.

Lol. Is this about those Serbian agents who'd turned out to have been offered all sorts of luxuries in exchange for horror story confessions?

You aren't an anti-semite. You're a bit of an idiot though.

Try war crimes investigations against the KLA and the lucrative black market organ trade to the West.

There are no "Serbian agents" because the POWs who passed through those KLA camps are all fucking dead.

OK, now this is utter and total bullshit —a “modern,” “progressive” and “revolutionary” version of the famous Blood Libel, that has been levelled against jews for nearly 2,000 years.

For those of you unfamiliar with this rubbish, it goes back to the Greek Appian, who claimed that jews sacrificed Greeks in the Temple in Jerusalem, but it became part of general European (christian) folklore with the case of William of Norwich in 1144. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel_against_Jews for the whole history of this sick slander — oh, dear, I hear the pro-HAMAS faction saying, “But Wikipedia lies,” to which I reply, “Not all the time.”)

And the crap is still being repeated. In December 1984, the Saudi Arabian delegate and President of the World Muslim Congress Dr. Ma'ruf al-Dawalibi, speaking before the UN Human Rights Commission conference on religious tolerance, stated,

Jews have indeed been the victims of discriminations throughout the centuries. But why? Let them answer this question themselves. The Talmud says that any Jew who does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jew will be damned forever.

Yet, the consumption of blood (animal or human) is forbidden to jews by the dietary laws known as kashrut — once again, for those of you unfamiliar with these, they are, with minor variations, identical to the islamic code called the dhabiha halal.

I leave the final word to the German emperor Frederick II (obviously a notable member of the IDF) who stated,

Neither the Old nor the New Testament states that the Jews lust for human blood: on the contrary, it is expressly stated in the Bible, in the laws of Moses, and in the Jewish ordinances designated in Hebrew as the 'Talmud,' that they should not defile themselves with blood.

What is my point in this essay into history? Simply to show that, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

So, what is my “interest” in this matter? What is my political position?

Firstly, I have both personal and political reasons to stand against the Zionist state.

• First the personal. My partner is a jewish woman of Moroccan descent. Her grandfather was educated in the UK and France — but when he took his family to the newly founded state of Israel, they were referred to as “shvartser” (“blacks” — actually more like “niggers”), and treated like dirt. Many Zionists, who were usually of European origin, felt that jews of Eastern descent didn’t “deserve” Israel, that they hadn’t “suffered enough,” or worse had “collaborated” with muslims.

• Please do not imagine that, because of this personal interest, I am “soft on judaism.” I will as happily criticize that religion (from within or without) as readily as I will criticize any other — after all, judaism regards my partner and me as “unnatural.”

• Politically, I denounce the Zionist state as an aggressive min-imperialist power, a proxy of US imperialism in the Middle East and an oppressor of the Palestinians. Thus, I would physically defend the Palestinian people from the Zionist state...

• …BUT I will not countenance any movement whose aim, to use the currently popular phrase, is to “push the jews into the sea.” The jewish people, as well as the Hebrew-speaking nation that currently occupies the physical area, known as “Palestine,” has a right to exist.

• Nor will I give one skerrick of political support to the reactionary pack of clerical nationalists known as the PLO, al-Fatah, HAMAS, or whatever they happen to call themselves this week. The solution to the “Middle East Problem” does not lie in nationalist two-state (or one-state) solutions or in pandering to muslim, jewish or christian religious mumbo-jumbo, but in socialist revolution mobilising all the oppressed of the region.

But my anger —and the basis for my crying “shame” on any of you who would believe this story — is that I’m a communist, not a Nazi, a member of Solidarność, or a muslim or christian religious fanatic.

Or a member of the SWP either!

Israel is a highly militarized, fanatically racist society and its soldiers are known for their unusually contemptuous views of the inhabitants of the land they occupy. This isn't my own view - this is the view of left-wing Israelis and quasi-exiles I know, and other people I know who have gone there and are familiar at all with the society. They just don't treat Palestinians like human beings. But this would hardly be the worst thing soldiers have done in almost any war. That said, I'm sure there are plenty of Israelis who would refuse Palestinian organs if they knew of their origin.

But all that said, the article doesn't seem to provide anything other than circumstantial evidence - it may or may not be worth further investigation, but the article doesn't itself present a convincing case.

Far more substantial evidence would be needed to give credence to this - and as several have said, there is an uncomfortable parallel to traditional anti-semitic tropes. It would be unwise, if not irresponsible, to cite these stories in a political context.

Salabra:

Both your attack on Zionism and the the casual conducting of racist stereotypes is to be applauded - I agree entirely. But I hope that your objections to Hamas (which, I trust, are not based on similarly cheap, constructed images of that movement or of political Islam in general...) does not also seek to deny that organisation the right to resist the full brutalities of the Zionist state and its military might...

Who is denying this though?

This sounds unobjectionable - but what is the strategic content in statements such as this? We can all here cry 'socialism' or 'the working-class' but what is the content of a revolutionary strategy for proletarian power in a particlar historical context?

Oh, come on!

In Sweden, there is at the moment a very large campaign against the left and left-wing critic of Israel, with the usual anti-sionism is anti-semitism theme.
To follow this and just dismiss every critic as anti-semite is not good at all, and the right-wing are happier than they've ever been, since they now have the chance to remove several left-wingeres whom are not anti-semites but anti-sionists, in just a sweep.

When you then put yourself in the position of criticizing Aftonbladet or Donal Boström, without even reading the original article, you are putting yourself to use by the upper class. Please don't do that.

I have read the article by Donald Boström, and i am interested in good critic against it, not just "this is just old anti-semitism". If this had happened in any other country, i am pretty sure that a good investigation would be started.

And the Israeli ambassador Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier says that the article is "shocking and appaling to us Swedes". Yes it is very shocking and appaling but it is what the Israelis does to palestinians that has shocked us Swedes. The Swedish ambassador in Israel have met demands of her resignation, after this comment. The public opinion in Sweden is very pro-palestinian.