A strange story has broken out in Sweden and Israel, with an article in Aftonbladet, a Swedish newspaper, by a journalist named Donald Boström.
According to The Times, Boström’s article “accuses the Israeli Army of harvesting organs from Palestinians wounded or killed by soldiers.” This claim is linked to the charges of black-market organ trafficking by Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, one of the flock of characters recently arrested in a corruption and money-laundering racket that revolved around New Jersey politicians.
The Israeli government has struck back, claiming that Boström’s article is false, outrageous, and, in the words of Benjamin Netanyahu, a “blood libel,” the sort of malicious rumor that has led to the persecution of Jews for centuries.
The Times article asserts that Boström’s article “was based on accusations Mr. Bostrom heard from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in the 1990′s, and which he published in a book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2001.”
That would certainly give one pause as to the veracity of the charge. This isn’t to say that all rumors are untrue, but there is perhaps no easier trap for a journalist to fall into than to listen to the harshest accusations of one group of people that is at war with another.
But there is probably a better reason to discount the accusation.
Al Roth, the Harvard economist whose work on matched-pair organ donations has started to transform the organ-transplantation scenario, told me he found the accusation unbelievable because of the logistics of organ harvesting itself. “Organs don’t last very long and have to be matched rather particularly,” he said, “so it would be hard to take them on spec for an international market. So I think black market organs must mostly be from live donors. Live donors can take blood tests well in advance and travel to where the patient is. Deceased organs have to be put on ice, and the clock starts ticking immediately and fast.”
Roth also points to a response of sorts on Ynet, a website affiliated with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharanot. It’s by Uria Asor, and is headlined “Special Report: Sweden’s Dirty Secret” :
[T]hose in the know and lox connoisseurs have been claiming that the Swedish gravad lax tastes differently than the Norwegian, Finnish, and Danish variety. ‘The Swedish variety contains some sort of slight sourness,’ says Danish Chef Richard Muller Holstrum. ‘I was never able to detect its source.’
However, Ynet’s special investigative report has revealed, for the first time, what may be the secret ingredient in Sweden’s gravad lax. The horrifying findings indicate that the source is fungus removed from the feet of innocent Norwegian fishermen.
Those who dislike Israel for whatever reason should at least acknowledge that, between parody and poetry, its journalism is pretty interesting.
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Apparently even the family of the dead Palestinian, from which organs allegedly were harvested, have expressed their doubts about the organ harvesting taking place.
But I must admit that I do not understand the piece of text from the Israeli newspaper. It sounds like something I would have written as a pre-teen, trying to be funny.
Just a small note on this. Aftonbladet is, in essence, the swedish equivalent of “the sun”.
Israel has a very diverse discourse, on all the issues.
I classify my political views as libertarian, but I try to follow left wingers online as well.
While this story does get coverage on the blogs, not even the biggest critics in Israel of our military remotely consider this to be a possibility.
It’s just so far fetched, that all we do is mock it.
There is no possible way this can be true, and even the most fanatical liberals here don’t buy the story.
What it does come out as however, is quite a blood libel.
To many of us, it reminded us of antisemitic propaganda that was wide spread in the past.
The good old stories of “Jews kill christian children and use their blood for traditional Jewish cooking”, sound very similar to this one (The Je… oops, Israel, harvest Palestinian organs and sell them in order to stock up on more Jew gold).
As much as i agree with Mr Netanyahu that the article is a repetition of centuries-old lies, the strategy the Israeli government has used for this issue is really counterproductive. Before they started demanding a condemnation from the Swedish government we still had the opportunity to discuss the anti-Semite stereotypes used in this, and other, articles in Swedish newspapers. Now that issue is overshadowed by the fact that a friendly democracy is trying to make our leaders violate our constitution.
It is interesting however, that the many of the tactics used by the Israeli government officials are the same used by Arab leaders when the caricatures of Mohammed were published a few years ago. However, I am confident that my government will stand by their defense of the principles of freedom of speech, and as a friend of the state of Israel I do hope their leaders could stop trying to alienate their friends like this.
Come on!!! Aftonbladet is a joke. I know people who write for it (e.g. my best friend’s wife). Andreas P compared Aftonbladet to The Sun but a better comparison would be to Weekly World News.
Aftonbladet (and it’s twin, Expressen) is not quite The Onion since the absurdity is often a byproduct and not the result of a concerted effort.
However, Israel should be ashamed of itself. Sweden, and the rest of the decent world, has something called “freedom of the press”. That Israel expects the Swedish government to react to and apologize for such garbage is absurd.
Free speech aside, this seems really shoddy journalism (I would say “is” but I don’t read Swedish, so I know what the Times has reported).
Apart from the practicalities of actually harvesting organs from a battlefield in a timely fashion (while staying within the general analytic framework of Freakonomics), I would have thought the odds of finding viable organs in bodies of Palestinians wounded or killed by Israeli soldiers would be extremely low, given the nature of warfare and the odds that some form of trauma would almost invariably be inflicted on the vital organs.
Pretty repugnant rumor mongering
The allegation that Israel is reacting to the Swedish blood libel in the same manner that Moslems reacted to the Danish cartoons is yet another example of the”one the one and. . . and on the other hand. . . ” equivalency many use to demean Israel. Not a single Swede or other European, and not a single European diplomatic or business outpost, is or feels threatened by physical harm by Israelis on account of this episode. The harsh reaction by Israel results from the memory of past charges such as those made by the Swedish newspaper resulting in Jews being killed.
As to the title of this piece, “Probably”? Does anyone at the Times think there is any probability, or even a possibility, that this is true? I suspect not, but once again Heaven forbid that you speak your mind lest you offend someone who thinks Jews are doomed to wander the earth and must be denied the means to live and defend themselves.
I never claimed Israel reacted in the same manner as Moslems, I claimed Israel reacted in the same manner as leaders of Arab countries. If there were Arab countries that threatened Danish and Swedish citizens with violence I apologize, but to my knowledge only private citizens and religious leaders did that.
The fact that Israel is a democracy causes me to hold it in much higher regard than neighboring dictatorships, but also to expect more of their officials. In a free country with freedoms of speech and press, like Israel or Sweden, a government knows that these issues will be resolved better if exposed to public discussions. Now instead, the anti-Semitism in Aftonbladet obscured due to the “diplomatic crisis” between the governments of Israel and Sweden. I can’t imagine that benefiting anyone but the anti-Semites.
Remind me, in what case did an article from Aftonbladet result in Jews getting killed? I know that the “newspaper” has a long history of publishing more or less openly anti-Semitic articles but I can’t recall an instance where it was directly linked to a murder.
Oh, and this is probably the first time in my life that I’ve been accused of being anti-Israel. Only on the Internet!