Let's not be racist here, but consider the implications of this. Do you believe the recipients were aware of where their donated organs came from? And, if they did, do you think they would care? For me, this is a very interesting subject.



Israel admits organ harvesting

Israel has admitted that in the 1990s, its forensic pathologists harvested organs from dead bodies, including Palestinians, without permission of their families.

The issue emerged with publication of an interview with the then-head of Israel's Abu Kabir forensic institute, Dr Jehuda Hiss.

The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic, who released it because of a huge controversy last summer over an allegation by a Swedish newspaper that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. Israel hotly denied the charge.

Parts of the interview were broadcast on Israel's Channel 2 TV over the weekend. In it, Dr Hiss said, "We started to harvest corneas ... Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family."

The Channel 2 report said that in the 1990s, forensic specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives.

In a response to the TV report, the Israeli military confirmed that the practice took place. "This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer," the military said in a statement quoted by Channel 2.

In the interview, Dr Hiss described how his doctors would mask the removal of corneas from bodies. "We'd glue the eyelid shut," he said. "We wouldn't take corneas from families we knew would open the eyelids."

Many of the details in the interview first came to light in 2004, when Dr Hiss was dismissed as head of the forensic institute because of irregularities over use of organs there. Israel's attorney general dropped criminal charges against him, and Dr Hiss still works as chief pathologist at the institute. He had no comment on the TV report.

Hiss became director of the institute in 1988. He said in the interview that the practice of harvesting organs without permission began in the "early 1990s." However, he also said that military surgeons removed a thin layer of skin from bodies as early as 1987 to treat burn victims. Dr Hiss said he believed that was done with family consent. The harvesting ended in 2000, he said.

Complaints against the institute, where autopsies of dead bodies are performed, at the time of Hiss' dismissal came from relatives of Israeli soldiers and civilians as well as Palestinians. The bodies belonged to people who died from various causes, including diseases, accidents and Israeli-Palestinian violence, but there has been no evidence to back up the claim in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that Israeli soldiers killed Palestinians for their organs. Angry Israeli officials called the report "anti-Semitic."

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, said she decided to make the interview public in the wake of the Aftonbladet controversy, which raised diplomatic tensions between Israel and Sweden and prompted Sweden's foreign minister to call off a visit to the Jewish state.

Ms Scheper-Hughes said that while Palestinians were "by a long shot" not the only ones affected by the practice in the 1990s, she felt the interview must be made public now because "the symbolism, you know, of taking skin of the population considered to be the enemy, (is) something, just in terms of its symbolic weight, that has to be reconsidered."

While insisting that all organ harvesting was done with permission, Israel's Health Ministry told Channel 2, "The guidelines at that time were not clear." It added, "For the last 10 years, Abu Kabir has been working according to ethics and Jewish law."

AP

 

That you open with "let's not be racist here" to introduce an article like this speaks strongly to your personal bias.

 

Can a brotha get a bigger organ???

 

Eeeehhh.

That's going to make gaining peace between Israel and Palestine easier...

Awesome. :/

 

See, this is why we need stem cells to create organ farms. That way, no controversy is made when you hear the term, "organ harvest".

 

Israel is a beautiful country.

European countries (but not the UK) are pieces of emo crap that loves to throw their key allies under the bus. And this is a classic example of this kind of shit.

Israel is in the middle of a war. The only reason they CANNOT win this war is because its key allies are preventing it from doing so. Reporting on this is an obvious attempt, yet again, to derail peace in the Middle East and make the Israelis look bad.

What possible justice, peace, humanity, or good can come from this kind of reporting? None, obviously it just ignites tensions yet again.

I think the real question here is: DOES THE WEST WANT PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST??? And if it is yes, LET ONE SIDE FREAKING WIN THE WAR ALREADY. STOP REPORTING THIS RANDOM CRAP AND SUPPORT ONE SIDE TO THE END!!!! Then you can bring up this shit.

Because any right minded person knows both sides have done some terrible shit; and if you are a greedy AP journalist you would exploit it to no end. If there is any person in this world that claims ethics and morality, I challenge them to justify keeping a war going on for over 60 years in the name of justice for BOTH sides. Bullshit, and shame on the AP, shame on the west for being so freaking confused and letting this war drag on for so long.

In fact, without western political intervention, the war can be over within a MONTH.

 

How exactly does this relate to the fact Israel was stealing organs? Sure, it makes the country look bad, but the fact is that they did steal organs.

I'm all for a Jewish State in the Middle East. But they do not have the right to treat their neighbors like animals, even if the Jews themselves have been treated like crap. This is a conflict that cannot be fought with fire.

 

Now I understand your cock sucking love for big brother.

 

So your idea is to blindly support one side just so "the war can be over"?

Shall I enter you into the running for Nobel Peace Prize?

 

Harvesting organs with permission is one thing, but this is gruesome and horrible, especially what happened to the Jews in the death camps!!

 

Seeing as how easy they are to win now, you might as well.

 

I agree, both sides are vicious towards each other, and it is not our place to take sides.

 

Sorry that I didn't have time to read your whole post so I shouldn't really comment but that never stopped anybody else.

Much that the Israelis do is ironic in the least given Jewish history. Although it's ghoulish, I'm not sure what would be racist about the practice. The Palestinians and the middle eastern Jews are both Semites with a common DNA heritage. They are different tribes of the same people who practice a different religion.

Only an ignorant person and there are many would call a Palestinian anti-semantic which unknown to many isn't the same as saying anti-Jewish.

 

Yes, because keeping both sides in a war for 60 years is the better course of action.

ALOT less people would have died if the war was over in 1948, but no... the west wanted "justice".

 

Yeap they did want justice, by helping the Jews, who had no rights to the land anymore. Hmmmmmm Justice? Bullshit. Btw, I'm in the military, same with bukkake bunny. Are you? Because If you want to send us all over there to start killing one side, you may as well suit up, cause your the only one who would volunteer.

 

Oh lovely military full of shit arrogant people... I've known many a military person that are baised and unjust, but sensible and smart to realize that is necessary; unfortunately the vast majority of them are confused. I'm not downplaying the military for what it does, but for the politics (both within the personnel and the general taxpayer) that gets in the way of objectives.

I'm just pointing out the fact that the war did exist for many many more years than it had to if the west just supported one side to the end. If the west decided to GIVE the land to the Jews, then clearly they have to support the Jews to the end if they want the situation to be over quickly. But no, while we debate whether or not this is just, we keep forgetting that there is a war, and that the war has already spanned 3 generations of people.

The real question to the west still is: how much longer are you going to prevent one side from winning? And yes, the Israelis should win, not only from a military and political perspective, but also because we originally supported them 100% and they actually like the west.

Supporting people that hate you also makes no sense from any perspective, especially the military perspective.

 

You really are an ignorant individual.

Both sides throughout what you call a war have been recieving aid from their allies. Israel in the main from the US; the palestinians from all the major arab nations in the area and both sides continue to do so.

During the 6 Day War and the Yom Kippur war (The October War or Ramadan War), all the natons arrayed against Israel were using soviet equipment and technology. In the Yom Kippur war we saw the showing of the soviet SAM 6 missiles which had a devastating effect on the Israeli air force.

So fuckwit what you gonna say next?

 

You are obviously not a right minded person or anything even close to it. What the west and especially the US has done is give Israel exactly the kind of total blind support you say is needed when the reality is staring you in the face.

Israel was the terrorist against the Palestinians to drive them out. Israel got the west and the United Nations to give them their country and then have ignored every UN demand since as they committed terrorism and genocide against the Palestinians and illegally expanded their borders.

It is none other than Israel that has kept this war going for 60 years and have constantly and consistently refused any meaningful peace settlements with them and their other Arab neighbor.

Here is the real Israel:

http://chss.montclair.edu/english/f...APTER 1: Moshe Sharett and His Personal Diary

Such utter brainwashed stupid propaganda.

 

That the war is STILL GOING ON!!!! YEAH BABY!!! LETS KEEP DEBATING AND DOING NOTHING DECISIVE!!!

So... what are you saying we should do?

EDIT:

Debating about useless things isnt actually going to solve a real problem.

 

There is a huge difference between harvesting the organs of fallen enemies to save allies and just killing people to harvest their organs. Both unethical but only the latter could be considered monstrous. Clearly that is not what's happening here.