By Brandon Kaufman
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

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

By Bobby Rajabi
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

BAGHDAD, Iraq – A series of bombings killed nine people in the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Mosul on December 15. The bombings come only one week after suicide bombings in the Iraqi capital killed one hundred twenty seven people. The new blasts have increased pressure on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to improve security.

In Baghdad, three cars were packed with bombs and were parked near different entrances to the Green Zone. One was located near the Foreign Ministry while two were located near the Immigration Ministry. At 7:30am, when Iraqis were entering the area to come to work, the three vehicles exploded within minutes of each other. Five people were killed by the bombings in the Iraqi capital and at least sixteen were wounded.

The bombings in Baghdad were the fourth in recent months to target government buildings and hit near the Green Zone, Baghdad’s most protected neighborhood. The Green Zone contains the parliament, ministries and the United States Embassy. An Iraqi woman, Um Ali, questioned how it was possible for the three vehicles to enter and explode when “there were two military checkpoints using detectors at the beginning of the street.”

The bombing in Mosul, a city two hundred twenty five miles away from the Iraqi capital, took place approximately four hours later. Two car bombs and a roadside mine went off and killed for people. The bombings took place near a church in a busy neighborhood and wounded up to forty people. Mosul is the third largest city in Iraqi and has been a lingering urban foothold for al Qaeda despite an overall drop in violence across the country.

The recent rash in bombings in Iraq has caused Iraqi civilians the ability of the Iraqi government to provide security leading up the country’s much anticipated elections next year. The government has stepped up its efforts to catch those responsible for attacks and prevent future attacks by giving a cash reward for information. The Iraqi cabinet has approved plans to give as much at eighty five thousand dollars to informants who give-up bomb makers. The plan was announced by the Iraqi Prime Minister, who is running for re-election in March.

For more information, please see:

BBC – Iraq Offers Reward For Information On Bomb Factories – 16 December 2009

Los Angeles Times – In Baghdad, More Blasts Near Iraq Government Center – 16 December 2009

Al Jazeera – Iraq Bombings Leave Several Dead – 15 December 2009

AP – Explosions in 2 Major Iraq Cities Kill 9 People – 15 December 2009

By Meredith Lee-Clark

Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

 

SDEROT, Israel – Israeli newspapers reported that two qassam rockets had been launched into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip during the third week in December. Since the beginning of 2009, there has been a ninety percent decrease in rockets launched from Gaza into Israel.

 

Still, as the year anniversary of the fighting between the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Hamas in the Gaza Strip approaches, residents of the towns in southern Israel are hesitant to let down their guard. Many residents are continuing to build bomb shelters to protect against Hamas rocket attacks. One such resident is Ramon Dahan, mother of five, who lives in the town of Sderot, less than a mile from the Israel-Gaza border. Dahan said that most of her neighbors’ houses have been hit multiple times from Palestinian rockets, and the current cease-fire has allowed Dahan to finally build a shelter.

 

Israeli border towns have experienced an economic improvement as a result of the ceasefire. Many middle class Israeli families have moved down to the South, as they have been outpriced from neighborhoods and towns in central Israel. The economic upturn in southern Israel contrasts with the situation of their Palestinian neighbors, who live less than a mile away, and are in the midst of the area’s worst recession as they attempt to rebuild from the fighting.

 

Despite the outward improvement, the impact of years of cross-border rockets remains. Though many of the Israeli border towns look like a town found in suburban America, one therapist in the Sderot area, Judith Bar-Hay, estimates that at least twenty percent of the town’s residents suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Bar-Hay says that there are also growing behavioral problems among the area’s youth.

 

The rockets launched from Gaza in December came despite a moratorium on attacks announced by Hamas, the ruling party of the Palestinian territory. One report said that the attacks may have been in retaliation for the death of a fifty-year-old Palestinian farmer who was reportedly killed by IDF forces in the al-Bureij refugee camp in Gaza. No group has claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks.

 

For more information, please see:

 

Ha’aretz – Two Qassams Hit Israel, in Second Gaza Rocket Attack This Week – 16 December 2009

 

Ma’an News Agency – Israeli Media Claims Projectiles Fired From Gaza – 16 December 2009

 

NPR – Shell Shock Lingers For Israelis After Gaza War – 15 December 2009

 

Associated Press – With Gaza Cease-Fire, South Israel Blossoms – 14 December 2009

 

Ynet News – 2 Rockets Fired From Gaza; None Injured – 13 December 2009

By Meredith Lee-Clark

Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

 

RAFAH, Egypt – Human Rights Watch has called for Israel and Egypt to halt their practice of deporting African refugees without giving the refugees an opportunity to claim asylum. In a statement dated December 12, Human Rights Watch said that Egypt routinely imprisons and then deports such refugees back to their country of origin, against United Nations refugee policy and the International Convention Against Torture. Human Rights Watch said that Israel’s practice of sending refugees back across the border into Egypt makes Israel complicit with Egypt’s serious human rights violations. Once sent back to their countries, the refugees are certain to face the violence and political situations they originally sought to escape.

 

Human Rights Watch called on the Israeli High Court to put an end to the “hot returns” policy, which authorizes Israeli soldiers along the Israel-Egypt border to return migrants to Egypt within twenty-four hours of crossing the border. The Israeli Defense Forces said that its soldiers fire flares when they see migrants attempting to cross the border, to alert their Egyptian counterparts, even though Egyptian border forces have been known to fire live ammunition at the crossing migrants. As of November 2009, Egyptian forces had killed sixteen African migrants as they attempted to cross into Israel.

 

One of those killed was Iskander Byen, the nineteen-year-old son of Ugalan Byen, who left her home country of Sudan to seek refuge in Israel. When the family got close to the border, Ms. Byen held on to her nine- and five-year-olds, and Iskander held his three-year-old sister, Rosa. As they approached the border, the shooting began. Iskander was shot several times, and a bullet went through Rosa’s leg. The family managed to duck underneath the wire that marks the Egypt-Israel border, but Iskander died en route to the hospital. Even after such a loss, Ms. Byen has no official papers and is in danger of being deported back to Sudan.

 

Hanass Jihahn, a researcher with the Israeli NGO African Relief Development Center, said the issue of refugees is a complicated one in Israel, as it is intrinsically tied up with the Palestinians and the Palestinian right of return.

 

“[T]here is a fear that if we allow them [the African refugees] to come here then perhaps the Palestinians later would say and what about us,” said Jihahn.

 

For more information, please see:

 

NPR – Egyptian Forces Accused of Shooting Asylum Seekers – 14 December 2009

 

Human Rights Watch – Israel: Court Should Halt Forced Returns of Migrants to Egypt – 12 December 2009

 

The National – Refugees Set Their Sights on Israel – 11 December 2009

 

Time – For African Seeking Asylum in Israel, dangers Abound – 11 December 2009

 

Christian Science Monitor – Crossing Into Israel, African Migrants Dodge Egyptian Bullets, Israeli Jail Threat – 14 November 2009