Monday, April 25, 2016

Israeli story








25 April 2016

Israeli Organ Traffic
An embarrassing story updated

By:
Karsten Riise
This article concerns past events in Israel. The article was published in Danish language
on 3 November 2010. The final question of the original article is followed by an update of events since the first release of this article.



Previous accusations of theft of organs

On 17 August 2009, the Swedish journalist Donald Boström in an article in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, described experiences he had had in the Palestinian territories in the 1990s. Boström recounted among other things, the 19-year-old Palestinian stone throwing Bilal Ahmed Ghanan, who was shot dead by Israeli snipers. When Bilal Ghanans remains came back from Israel's national postmortem center Abu Kabir, his body was ripped open and the body-parts removed. According to Boström’s conversations with several Palestinian families, this case was far from unique. Boström also reported that a spokesman for Israel's defense had stated that the Palestinians lied about those things.

Israel's Foreign Ministry and pro-Israel groups in the United States and Europe were quick to brand Donald Boström as ‘anti-Semite’. Israel's ambassador to Sweden demanded that the Swedish government should denounce Boström’s article. Israel continued its tough pressure on the Government of Sweden for a long time, which was embarrassing for Sweden’s freedom of expression – especially as the Government in neighboring Denmark at that time totally rejected pressure from Muslim countries concerning the anti-Muslim ‘cartoons’.

A year later, in 2010, testimonies were coming forth which corroborated Boström’s report. And it was not only Palestinians who have been affected. The American medical anthropologist Dr. Nancy Scheper-Hughes published a shocking article 25 October, 2010 about Israel's national postmortem center Abu Kabir, and she reported, among other things an interview with Abu Kabir chief pathologist Dr. Yehuda Hiss, which she conducted and taped in July, 2000.


Dr. Hiss speaks out

In the interview in July, 2000, Dr. Hiss explained openly that he basically took the organs he wanted. Dr. Hiss had invented what he called ‘tacit consent’ from the relatives. His modus operandi started back in 1974, when Dr. Hiss was working at a clinic in Tel Hashomer which was affiliated with the Israeli army. Here he often took corneas and skins (for burns patients) from bodies for the Israeli Defense Force. In 1989, Dr. Hiss became head of Abu Kabir, Israel's national autopsy center. Here Dr. Hiss continued his routines. Dr. Hiss was very much aware that certain religious groups sometimes lifted the eyelids of the deceased, and in such cases he avoided taking the corneas. On other bodies, he glued the eyelids together after taking the corneas. Skins were taken from the back of the calves, in order that one would not notice anything. Since 1981, Israeli law required the consent of the families before the autopsy, but according to the interview, Dr. Hiss circumvented this by calling everything he did, for ‘organ harvesting’. In the early '90s, Dr. Hiss and his team also began to take femur, and in 1996, Dr. Hiss made a list of the body parts he delivered with corresponding prices. At the same time, Dr. Hiss and his team began to stock a variety of human parts. Customers were, according to Dr. Hiss, public hospitals in Israel, and according to himself he made a patriotic duty.

All went fine for Dr. Hiss until April 1997, when he harvested organs from a dead Israeli soldier named Zeev Buzaglo, whose father was a doctor. When the father discovered that the dead son's organs were removed, he shouted alarm, and it led to a major public scandal in Israel. Dr. Hiss had apparently taken bodies and parts of bodies from both Israelis and Palestinians. So in 1997 it was a little difficult for Dr. Hiss to ‘harvest’ from Israeli corpses. But Israel is a country in permanent war with the Palestinians, and this gives a smooth supply of ‘material’. According to Scheper-Hughes, the Palestinians are by definition ‘enemy’ so if they shout alarm about something, then it's probably a lie, for enemies are indeed generally stamped as liars. This was also what happened in Boström’s article.

The next big scandal came when one of Dr. Hiss' employees, Dr. Chen Kugel, shouted alarm. After this scandal, Dr. Hiss officially was fired as head of the Abu Kabir, but at the same time, Dr. Hiss was rehired as chief pathologist at the very same institution. Three employees who had denounced Dr. Hiss were genuinely fired, and Dr. Kugel was demoted (as a military doctor Dr. Kugel could not be fired). Israel had, according to Scheper-Hughes, acknowledged that organ harvesting has been going on in the 90s, but officially it was claimed that this practice stopped in 2000. However, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz documented that irregularities with human remains from an Israeli national which happened again at Abu Kabir in 2001, a case which was first uncovered in 2003. Haaretz had even reported on earlier occasions that dead bodies that were piled up created odors. When you look at Israel's public handling of the case, not least in connection with the complaints by Dr. Kugels and other staff members, it could seem that Israel had a dual policy which on one hand banned these practices, but in reality Israel may have allowed that they were practiced.


Later informations on the handling of organs at Abu Kabir

At a conference in California in May 2010, according to Scheper-Hughes, Dr. Kugel told that the conditions at Abu Kabir were far worse than had publicly emerged. According to Dr. Kugel, a femur was sold for $ 300 and all the organs in a body could be available for around $ 2,500. Hearts, brains, livers, etc. which could not be used as implants, could be sold for research, exhibition or medical training. Sometimes, according to Dr. Kugel, the empty dead body was filled with toilet paper or anything else, before being sewn together, so that relatives would not notice that the body dented inward. According to the newspaper Haaretz, bodies were stuffed with ‘foreign material’, so Dr. Kugels accusations do not seem impossible. Scheper-Hughes had later been trying to get a new interview with Dr. Hiss, but she was denied this by Israel’s Ministry of Health. Later, Dr. Hiss denied everything, even what he has said earlier. According to Scheper-Hughes, Dr. Hiss and Abu Kabir have since then been involved in three lawsuits concerning organ trafficking. Two cases involved Israeli citizens and the last case concerned the American activist Rachel Corrie, who in 2003 was run over by a bulldozer of the Israeli army.


Where does Israel’s organ-scandal stop?

Israel's accusation against Boström as ‘anti-Semite’ and Israel's enormous pressure on the Government of Sweden was in itself a scandal. It all seemed hypocritical when it internally in Israel had long been recognized that tremendous problems existed in the handling of organs in exactly that period in the '90s, which Boström described in his article of August, 2009.
Up to 2007, according to WHO, Israel was one of the most active countries in organ trafficking, and it was only in 2008 that Israel's first law banned body-trafficking and clarified the limits of what was permissible to Israeli hospitals. The handling of the scandals at Abu Kabir, however, suggests that Israel may well have had a policy to ban certain things, and yet tacitly accept that they take place. Israel has been marked by corruption scandals, even at top level. Many things happen in Israel based on money and personal connections. At least three government leaders have been affected by scandals, a candidate for the national bank director, a housing minister, and a foreign minister have been concerned, and a former finance minister was jailed. Israel is always at war, which increases the room for maneuver that someone can do as they please.
We know from the organ scandal around Rabbi Isaac Rosenbaum in New York in 2009, that even respectable hospitals in the United States can close their eyes to massive irregularities. The widespread corruption, and the many issues surrounding the Abu Kabir Institute in conjunction with Scheper-Hughes' tape recordings, Dr. Kugels statements, and Donald Boströms experiences in the Palestinian territories justify to wonder where the Israeli organ scandal stops.


Update April, 2016

The disgraced Dr. Hiss was allowed by Israel to continue his work for two more years, until he was finally fired in 2012, after the Israeli state was forced to pay $ 920,000 in damages to affected families. It took Israel nearly 20 years of denials before Dr. Hiss was finally replaced by Dr. Chen Kugel, the person who had at first been demoted after bringing up the organ scandal.

Websites still abound even today, which taint the Swedish journalist Donald Boström, who brought the organ scandal to attention in western media in 2009.


Karsten Riise
Partner & Editor

CHANGE NEWS &
CHANGE MANAGEMENT



Sources:

Counterpunch, 25 October, 2010
Nancy Scheper-Hughes: Body-parts and Bio-piracy
http://www.counterpunch.com/hughes10252010.html

Aftonbladet (Sweden), 17 August, 2009
Donald Boström: Våra söner plundras på sina organ
http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab?service=print

Counterpunch, 2 November, 2010
Uri Avnery: The Occupation and Political Corruption in Israel
http://www.counterpunch.com/avnery11022010.html

Haaretz 9 November, 2001
A-G orders criminal probe of Abu Kabir
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/a-g-orders-criminal-probe-of-abu-kabir-1.74340

Haaretz 13 June, 2002
Bodies of 21 Palestinians stored at Abu Kabir
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/bodies-of-21-palestinians-stored-at-abu-kabir-1.42480

Haaretz 15 November, 2002
Abu Kabir forensics boss falsely signed autopsy reports, police report claims
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/abu-kabir-forensics-boss-falsely-signed-autopsy-reports-police-report-claims-1.28263

Haaretz 30 July, 2003
Autopsy reveals soldier’s organs were removed
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/autopsy-reveals-soldier-s-organs-were-removed-1.95717

Haaretz 14 March, 2013
Chief Pathologist Tapped to Replace Disgraced Hiss
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/chief-pathologist-tapped-to-replace-disgraced-hiss.premium-1.509223

Haaretz 9 August, 2015
Justice Ministry Is Paying Disgraced Pathologist to Be Expert Witness
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.670235


Ynetnew.com 25 March, 2008
Knesset approves organ donation law
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3523461,00.html

WHO 2007.12.12
The state of international organ trade: a provisional picture based on integration of available information. 
http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/85/12/06-039370/en/