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.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
I have neighbors in Tucson who are visited each couple of years by an old friend from Isreal. The Israeli woman introduced herself to me as a former nurse who is now a “kidney donor agent”. It seems she visits several US cities to meet destitute Americans who have been recruited to be sent to Isreal and have one of their their kidneys harvested in exchange for money. It is she who does a cursory physical exam and blood test to determine they are not ill with a disease that might be passed on to the receipient. This business has been going on for years and she tells me that there is no shortage of donors willing to make some money.
These charges, as outrageous as they sound, should be investigated. The comments by Roth about storage on a battlefield are not applicable as many Palestinian deaths took place in incursions by the Israeli army into towns to round up young men throwing stones. These people may have been gravely wounded and died in hospital allowing removal of organs without permission of their families. As was reported below in the Israeli press, the senior pathologist was investigated for removal of organs form an Israeli soldier without his families permission.” Israeli themselves uncovered an organ warehouse in Abu Kabir Forensic Institute. Prof. Yehuda Hiss, Israel’s senior pathologist was charged in 2002 with “illegal sale of and dealings in organs and body parts, removing organs from deceased persons without consent, and misrepresenting organs in returned bodies. . . placing the cardboard center of toilet paper rolls and metallic rods in their place to fill the voids in the body and hide the theft of the organs.” All these crimes were reported by Palestinian families after receiving the mutilated corpses of loved ones.
http://www.allbusiness.com/middle-east/israel/102662-1.html
Where are the devenders of freedom of expression and freedom of the press? Are those principles worth defending only when we criticize “Third World dictators and Arab fanatics”? Mr Netanyahu and his government are going too far in asking the Swedish government to apologoze for the writings of one individual in a newspaper people don’t really take seriously. What’s next? The whole world should self flagelate each time something negative is said about Israel? The story we are commenting on would not have caught anyone’s attention if Likoudniks all around the world have taken it for what it is: an absurdity written by an individual with an out of control hyper-emotional personality and a very poor judgement. A dog biting a human is not news. But a human biting the is surely makes news…
Foot fungus was a pretty useful ingredient traditionally in wine making as well.
Free press does not mean the freedom to print outright lies.
Netanyahu didn’t get his knee’s in too much of a knot when 14,000 men, women, and children were murdered in cold blood in Gaza. Israel will never live that atrocity down in the eyes of the world.
Jim Dandy.
Nick Rosen, of Tel Aviv, claims he was paid $20,000 to give his kidney to a Long Island businessman. The video chronicles Rosen’s journey from Israel to the Unites States for the transplant.
Brad Gursky recipient
Dont know how to submit stories but here is another case for the Kidey Black market theme.
Margaret Fouda suggests that these allegations should be investigated, so let’s see … the Palestinian mentioned in the original article was shot in the CHEST. And then Israeli soldiers harvested his organs for resale. And this, Bostrom suggests, was a routine procedure. So, Margaret, are you suggesting that this is a viable business— shooting an unwilling donor in the chest, then rushing him into the hospital in order to harvest his organs for resale? Sounds like a pretty unreliable business plan to me.