GAZA – Israel possesses the world's largest
skin bank, a medical facility that stores human skin for later use in treating
burns and skin cancers. This bank was established in 1986 under the supervision
of the military medical sector of the occupying army, which provides its
services internationally, especially to requests from Western countries.
اضافة اعلان
Israeli occupation authorities been stealing
organs from the bodies of dead Palestinian, a heinous criminal practice that
has been revealed in several reports and through testimonies of Israeli doctors
who participated in this gruesome practice, violating professional ethics and
constituting a crime against humanity, Al-Ghad reported.
In contrast, this Israeli bank differs from
other banks worldwide in that its supply of these vital organs does not come
solely from voluntary donors. Instead, documented cases of stealing skin from
the bodies of Palestinians have been recorded, individuals whose organs are
also stolen.
There is compelling evidence of Israelis
engaging in trafficking these stolen organs, making the entity the largest
market for organs in the Middle East.
Where
did Israel get this inventory from?
Expert in Israeli affairs Anas Abu Arqoub
says, "The Israeli skin bank is the largest in the world, surpassing the
American skin bank that was established 40 years before it, noting that
Israel's population is much smaller than the United States."
Arqoub emphasizes that the theft of organs
from Palestinian bodies is not just suspicions, stating, "Even the Israeli
media acknowledges that it is an extraction process without the knowledge of
the dead's families."
The reserve of human skin held by the Israeli
occupation state, equivalent to 170 square meters, stored within the Israeli
skin bank, confirms Arqoub's account. The number is considered unreasonable
since Israel ranks third in its population's refusal to donate organs,
attributed to Jewish religious beliefs.
Handing
over Palestinian bodies to their families without organs!
The details of the story date back to 2001
when Swedish investigative journalist Donald Boström published an investigation
exposing the theft of organs from the bodies of Palestinian martyrs and their
trafficking by Israeli entities. This was the first time this crime was
revealed to the international public.
Boström did not stop at this point but
published another investigation on the same subject in 2009 in the pages of the
Swedish magazine "Aftonbladet." The investigation mentions that the
Israeli Ministry of Health launched a national campaign to encourage organ
donation in 1992. However, despite that, a significant gap persisted between
the demand and the supply of donations.
Coinciding with that campaign, cases of the
disappearance of several Palestinian youth began, only to return afterward in
closed coffins. The Israeli authorities imposed on their families to bury them
at night without funerals.
Boström says, "I was in the region at
that time, and on several occasions, UN employees contacted me concerned about
the developments. The individuals who contacted me said that organ theft
certainly happened, but they were prevented from doing anything about it."
These contacts prompted the journalist to
delve further into the issue, so he went to interview the families of the dead
who confirmed the theft of their sons' organs before their killing. Among them
was the son of the martyr Bilal Ahmed Ghannan, who was 19 years old when the
Israeli army arrested him in the village of Um al-Tut in the West Bank in 1992.
He returned with a body without internal organs, from the neck to below the
abdomen.
The Israeli medical authorities did not deny
the torture and theft of Bilal's organs. At that time, the director of the
Israeli Institute of Forensic Medicine, Chen Kugel, said that Bilal's family
could be right because they "took everything that could be taken from all
the bodies that came to the Institute of Forensic Medicine," without the
family's consent. His family did not receive any explanation, apology, or
compensation for what happened.
Israeli
confessions of organ theft from Palestinians
In a 2009 documentary on the issue, there are
admissions from the former director of the Israeli Institute of Forensic
Medicine, Yehuda Hiss, confirming the theft of organs from the bodies of
Palestinian in the institute. Hiss stated, "We took corneas, skin, heart
valves, and bones ... Almost everything was done unofficially to a large
extent... and permission was not sought from the families."
In her study on dealing with the bodies of
Palestinians at the Abu Kabir Forensic Medicine Center in Tel Aviv, published
in a book titled "On Their Bodies," anthropologist Meirav Feis stated
that she witnessed "how they take organs from the bodies of Palestinians.
In return, they leave the bodies of soldiers intact."
The researcher added, "They take corneas,
skin, and heart valves in a way that makes the absence of those organs
unnoticed by non-specialists. They replace corneas with plastic bodies and
remove the skin from the back so that the family does not see it. In addition,
the bodies of the dead are used in medical schools in Israeli universities for
research purposes."
Feis said, "In the first intifada, the
army effectively allowed the institute to extract organs from Palestinians
under a military procedure that required dissecting the bodies of Palestinian
prisoners. The autopsy procedure was accompanied by the removal of organs used
by the Israeli skin bank, established in 1985 to treat burns suffered by
Israeli soldiers."
Trafficking
in the organs of Palestinian casualties
Israel is one of the largest markets for trafficking
in human organs in the world, and the largest in the Middle East. Media reports
revealed that the Israeli entity is involved in killing Palestinians to steal
their internal organs illegally and trade them within an illegal international
network.
In 2009, the US Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) arrested an Israeli settler named Levy Izhak Rosenbaum.
After investigating him, it was revealed that he played the role of a broker in
organ-selling operations in the United States for the benefit of a criminal
cell led by rabbis, politicians, and government officials in Israel.
Journalist Donald Boström, in his mentioned
investigation, suggests a connection between this network and the theft of
organs from Palestinian martyrs taking place in "Israel." Boström
said, "Half of the kidneys transplanted to Israelis since the beginning of
the first decade of the 21st century were illegally purchased. The Israeli
health authorities have full knowledge of this activity but do nothing to stop
it."
In a report published by the Israeli newspaper
"Haaretz" in 2016, Israel admitted to losing dozens of bodies of
Palestinians. The newspaper quoted statements from sources in the Israeli
judicial and security apparatuses about the loss of 121 bodies of Palestinians
held by the occupation authorities since the 1990s.
Continued
organ theft
Following the explosion of the organ theft
scandal in 2009, the Israeli government tried to evade the proven charges
against it. The spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Health at that time,
Einav Shimron Greenboim, issued a statement saying, "The practice
mentioned in the investigation is an old story that ended years ago."
Doubts persist about the continuation of these
unethical practices that violate human rights, as indicated by the Israeli
authorities' continued detention of dozens of bodies of Palestinian dead,
justifying it as a punitive measure.
According to Abdel Nasser Farwana, the head of
the Studies and Documentation Unit at the Palestinian Prisoners and
Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission, Israel still holds more than 370 bodies of
Palestinian and Arab bodies who died in different circumstances and years
apart. He added, "The list of these detained martyrs includes individuals
who died from the 1970s until around 2023."
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