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<h1><font size=4><b>Farwana: “All facts on the ground prove Swedish
report
correct”</b></font></h1>
<img src="http://www.imemc.org/graphics/date.gif" width=12 height=10 alt="author">
</b></h1><font size=3> Saturday August 22, 2009
00:05<img src="http://www.imemc.org/graphics/person.gif" width=14 height=12 alt="author">
by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies <br>
<a href="http://www.imemc.org/article/61453" eudora="autourl">
http://www.imemc.org/article/61453<br><br>
</a></font>Former Palestinian detainee, researcher Abdul-Nasser Farwana,
stated that all facts on the ground, since decades, prove that the
Israeli occupation executed Palestinian detainees after they surrendered
and refused to hand their bodies to their families. Hundreds of bodies
were transferred to the families days, months or even years after the
fact, and when the bodies were sent back, they were missing vital
internal organs. <br><br>
Farwana added that the Swedish report, written by Donald Boström and
published by Aftonbladet Swedish paper, regarding illegal trafficking of
body parts of Palestinians is directly connected to the execution of
Palestinians after they surrendered to the army, and is connected with
the arrest of 40 well-known figures, including Rabbis in New Jersey for
money laundering and corruption, in a scheme that involved sales of
Israeli kidneys in the US and other corruption rackets. <br><br>
Farwana added that one of the illegal acts carried out by Israel is
having secret detention facilities in which dozens of detainees were
imprisoned and never heard of anymore. This is in addition to the
“Numbers Graveyard” in which “unknown” Palestinian and Arab fighters are
buried. <br><br>
He said that Israel still denies it is holding hundreds of Palestinian
and Arab fighter, and refuses to cooperate with the Red Cross on the
issue. <br><br>
The researcher added that Israel is the only state that had a policy of
detaining the bodies of slain Arab and Palestinian fighters, and that
some 300 fighters are buried in the numbers graveyard. <br><br>
Hundreds of bodies were returned during prisoner-swap deals, including
the latest swap-deal between Hezbollah and Israel in which some 200
bodies were moved to Lebanon. <br><br>
Farwana further said that dozens of detainees died in Israeli prisons,
some due to torture, and their bodies were not immediately sent to their
families, but instead were moved to forensic center, and some of their
body parts were removed before bodies were sent back to the
Palestinians. <br><br>
He said the Swedish paper said in its report that Palestinians
youth were abducted by the Israeli army from their homes, were killed
later on, and when their bodies were return, they were cut open and vital
organs were missing. <br><br>
Rabbi Levi Yitzhak Rosenberg, who was recently arrested in New York, is
believed to be involved in illegal trade of organs, and that he sold
Kidney to patients in the United States for 160.000 USD. <br><br>
The Aftonbladet report placed the Israeli-Swedish relations at odds, and
some Israel officials demanded Sweden to officially apologize, while
other officials said that this report in part of the efforts to demonize
Israel and the Jews. <br><br>
This is the link for the full Aftonbladet report, in English, with
pictures attached
<a href="http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=8390&lg=en">
http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=8390&lg=en</a><br>
The article follows.<br>
*****************************************************************<br><br>
<font size=5 color="#8C3800"><b>“Our sons plundered for their
organs”</b></font><font size=3> <br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#8C3800">You could call me a “matchmaker,”
said Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, from Brooklyn, USA, in a secret recording with
an FBI-agent whom he believed to be a client. Ten days later, at the end
of July this year, Rosenbaum was arrested and a vast, Sopranos-like,
imbroglio of money-laundering and illegal organ-trade was revealed.
Rosenbaum’s matchmaking had nothing to do with romance. It was all about
buying and selling kidneys from Israel on the black market. Rosenbaum
says that he buys the kidneys for $10,000, from poor people. He then
proceeds to sell the organs to desperate patients in the States for
$160,000. The accusations have shaken the American transplantation
business. If they are true it means that organ trafficking is documented
for the first time in the US, experts tell the New Jersey Real-Time
News.<br><br>
On the question of how many organs he has sold Rosenbaum replies: “Quite
a lot. And I have never failed,” he boasts. The business has been running
for quite some time. Francis Delmonici, professor of transplant surgery
at Harvard and member of the National Kidney Foundation’s Board of
Directors, tells the same newspaper that organ-trafficking, similar to
the one reported from Israel, is carried out in other places of the world
as well. 5–6,000 operations a year, about ten per cent of the world’s
kidney transplants are carried out illegally, according to
Delmonici.<br><br>
Countries suspected of these activities are Pakistan, the Philippines and
China, where the organs are allegedly taken from executed prisoners. But
Palestinians also harbor strong suspicions against Israel for seizing
young men and having them serve as the country’s organ reserve – a very
serious accusation, with enough question marks to motivate the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) to start an investigation about
possible war crimes.<br><br>
Israel has repeatedly been under fire for its unethical ways of dealing
with organs and transplants. France was among the countries that ceased
organ collaboration with Israel in the nineties. Jerusalem Post wrote
that “the rest of the European countries are expected to follow France’s
example shortly.”<br><br>
Half of the kidneys transplanted to Israelis since the beginning of the
2000s have been bought illegally from Turkey, Eastern Europe or Latin
America. Israeli health authorities have full knowledge of this business
but do nothing to stop it. At a conference in 2003 it was shown that
Israel is the only western country with a medical profession that doesn’t
condemn the illegal organ trade. The country takes no legal measures
against doctors participating in the illegal business – on the contrary,
chief medical officers of Israel’s big hospitals are involved in most of
the illegal transplants, according to Dagens Nyheter (December 5,
2003).<br><br>
In the summer of 1992, Ehud Olmert, then minister of health, tried to
address the issue of organ shortage by launching a big campaign aimed at
having the Israeli public register for post-mortem organ donation. Half a
million pamphlets were spread in local newspapers. Ehud Olmert himself
was the first person to sign up. A couple of weeks later the Jerusalem
Post reported that the campaign was a success. No fewer than 35,000
people had signed up. Prior to the campaign it would have been 500 in a
normal month. In the same article, however, Judy Siegel, the reporter,
wrote that the gap between supply and demand was still large. 500 people
were in line for a kidney transplant, but only 124 transplants could be
performed. Of 45 people in need of a new liver, only three could be
operated on in Israel.<br><br>
While the campaign was running, young Palestinian men started to
disappear from villages in the West Bank and Gaza. After five days
Israeli soldiers would bring them back dead, with their bodies ripped
open. <br><br>
Talk of the bodies terrified the population of the occupied territories.
There were rumors of a dramatic increase of young men disappearing, with
ensuing nightly funerals of autopsied bodies. <br><br>
I was in the area at the time, working on a book. On several occasions I
was approached by UN staff concerned about the developments. The persons
contacting me said that organ theft definitely occurred but that they
were prevented from doing anything about it. On an assignment from a
broadcasting network I then travelled around interviewing a great number
of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza – meeting parents who
told of how their sons had been deprived of organs before being killed.
One example that I encountered on this eerie trip was the young
stone-thrower Bilal Achmed Ghanan. <br><br>
It was close to midnight when the motor roar from an Israeli military
column sounded from the outskirts of Imatin, a small village in the
northern parts of the West Bank. The two thousand inhabitants were awake.
They were still, waiting, like silent shadows in the dark, some lying
upon roofs, others hiding behind curtains, walls, or trees that provided
protection during the curfew but still offered a full view toward what
would become the grave for the first martyr of the village. The military
had interrupted the electricity and the area was now a closed-off
military zone – not even a cat could move outdoors without risking its
life. The overpowering silence of the dark night was only interrupted by
quiet sobbing. I don’t remember if our shivering was due to the cold or
to the tension. Five days earlier, on May 13, 1992, an Israeli special
force had used the village’s carpentry workshop for an ambush. The person
they were assigned to put out of action was Bilal Achmed Ghanan, one of
the stone-throwing Palestinian youngsters who made life difficult for the
Israeli soldiers.<br><br>
As one of the leading stone-throwers Bilal Ghanan had been wanted by the
military for a couple of years. Together with other stone-throwing boys
he hid in the Nablus mountains, with no roof over his head. Getting
caught meant torture and death for these boys – they had to stay in the
mountains at all costs.<br><br>
On May 13 Bilal made an exception, when for some reason, he walked
unprotected past the carpentry workshop. Not even Talal, his older
brother, knows why he took this risk. Maybe the boys were out of food and
needed to restock.<br><br>
Everything went according to plan for the Israeli special force. The
soldiers stubbed their cigarettes, put away their cans of Coca-Cola, and
calmly aimed through the broken window. When Bilal was close enough they
needed only to pull the triggers. The first shot hit him in the chest.
According to villagers who witnessed the incident he was subsequently
shot with one bullet in each leg. Two soldiers then ran down from the
carpentry workshop and shot Bilal once in the stomach. Finally, they
grabbed him by his feet and dragged him up the twenty stone steps of the
workshop stair. Villagers say that people from both the UN and the Red
Crescent were close by, heard the discharge and came to look for wounded
people in need of care. Some arguing took place as to who should take
care of the victim. Discussions ended with Israeli soldiers loading the
badly wounded Bilal in a jeep and driving him to the outskirts of the
village, where a military helicopter waited. The boy was flown to a
destination unknown to his family. Five days later he came back, dead and
wrapped in green hospital fabric.<br><br>
A villager recognized Captain Yahya, the leader of the military column
who had transported Bilal from the postmortem center Abu Kabir, outside
of Tel Aviv, to the place for his final rest. “Captain Yahya is the worst
of them all,” the villager whispered in my ear. After Yahya had unloaded
the body and changed the green fabric for a light cotton one, some male
relatives of the victim were chosen by the soldiers to do the job of
digging and mixing cement.<br><br>
Together with the sharp noises from the shovels we could hear laughter
from the soldiers who, as they waited to go home, exchanged some jokes.
As Bilal was put in the grave his chest was uncovered. Suddenly it became
clear to the few people present just what kind of abuse the boy had been
exposed to. Bilal was not by far the first young Palestinian to be buried
with a slit from his abdomen up to his chin.<br><br>
The families in the West Bank and in Gaza felt that they knew exactly
what had happened: “Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,”
relatives of Khaled from Nablus told me, as did the mother of Raed from
Jenin and the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who had all
disappeared for a number of days only to return at night, dead and
autopsied.<br><br>
“Why are they keeping the bodies for up to five days before they let us
bury them? What happened to the bodies during that time? Why are they
performing autopsy, against our will, when the cause of death is obvious?
Why are the bodies returned at night? Why is it done with a military
escort? Why is the area closed off during the funeral? Why is the
electricity interrupted?” Nafe’s uncle was upset and he had a lot of
questions.<br><br>
The relatives of the dead Palestinians no longer harbored any doubts as
to the reasons for the killings, but the spokesperson for the Israeli
army claimed that the allegations of organ theft were lies. All the
Palestinian victims go through autopsy on a routine basis, he said. Bilal
Achmed Ghanem was one of 133 Palestinians killed in various ways that
year. According to the Palestinian statistics the causes of death were:
shot in the street, explosion, tear gas, deliberately run over, hanged in
prison, shot in school, killed at home etcetera. The 133 people killed
were between four months to 88 years old. Only half of them, 69 victims,
went through postmortem examination. The routine autopsy of killed
Palestinians – of which the army spokesperson was talking – has no
bearing on the reality in the occupied territories. The questions
remain.<br><br>
We know that Israel has a great need for organs, that there is a vast and
illegal trade of organs which has been running for many years now, that
the authorities are aware of it and that doctors in managing positions at
the big hospitals participate, as well as civil servants at various
levels. We also know that young Palestinian men disappeared, that they
were brought back after five days, at night, under tremendous secrecy,
stitched back together after having been cut from abdomen to
chin.<br><br>
It’s time to bring clarity to this macabre business, to shed light on
what is going on and what has taken place in the territories occupied by
Israel since the Intifada began.<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
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