By Meredith Lee-Clark
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East
JERUSALEM, Israel/West Bank – Officials admitted on December 21 that Israel harvested organs without family members’ permission from both Palestinians and Israelis throughout the 1990s. The practice reportedly ended in 2000.
The admission came after an interview with Jehuda Hiss from 2000 was released after allegations of organ harvesting in Israel appeared in Swedish newspaper during the summer of 2009. The Swedish report had alleged that Israeli soldiers had stolen organs from Palestinian men after killing them; Israel immediately denied the claims, calling them anti-Semitic. Sweden refused to apologize for the article, citing freedom of the press.
In the 2000 interview with University of California at Berkeley anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Jehuda Hiss said that the practice began with harvesting corneas for transplants in public hospitals, and spread to harvesting other parts such as skin, heart valves, and bones.
“Whatever was done was highly informal,” said Hiss. “No permission was asked from the family.”
Hiss said that after getting permission from family members to do an autopsy, “we felt free” to harvest organs. Israel’s health ministry told Israeli television that transplant guidelines during the 1990s were “not clear,” and that since 2000 “Abu Kabir has been working according to ethics and Jewish law.”
After she released the interview, Scheper-Hughes said she did not believe that Israel murdered Palestinians for their organs, though the practice had implications that were, at the very least, unsettling.
“The symbolism of taking skin out of a population that is considered to be the enemy and using it for skin for the military, that’s something that—just in terms of symbolic weight—has to be reconsidered,” Scheper-Hughes told Israel’s Channel 2.
After complaints surfaced at the end of the 1990s about improper practices at Abu Kabir, an investigation was launched and there was a change in institute management.
The Palestinian Authority’s Central Council announced after the interview had been aired that its Minister of Prisoner Affairs, Issa Qaraqe, would launch its own investigation and report back to the Palestinian government.
For more information, please see:
ABC News (Australia) – Israel Admits Organ Harvesting – 21 December 2009
Al Jazeera – Israel Admits to Organ Thefts – 21 December 2009
CNN – Israel Harvested Organs Without Permission, Officials Say – 21 December 2009
Ma’an News Agency – PA to Follow Up on Organ Harvesting Allegations – 21 December 2009
Post Chronicle – Israel Organ Harvesting Palestinians and Soldiers; Secrets Revealed – 21 December 2009
