Debunking the world’s largest skin bank: How Israelis harvest organs without consent?
As the recent events escalate in Gaza and the death toll of innocent civilians is rising every minute, some independent reporters pointed to the illegal human organ trade that has been happening inside Israel to the Palestinian martyrs’ bodies for too long. Today, and after a lot of deep digging and analysis, I gathered some previous reports that have documented those events in detail, pointing out the human rights violations and immoral, shady business that has been going on for so long within “the only democracy in the Middle East,” as a lot of hypocrites claim.
An article by Palghraph journal sourcing a report by the Palestinian media ministry called “Detained bodies of martyrs: organ theft and trade” is stating in details and quoting from eyewitnesses what is really happening inside.
Before I mention what was reported about the skin bank and is probably still happening, I first have to mention the journalist Donald Boström’s 2001 report about the organ harvesting and trading of Palestinian martyrs by Israeli soldiers. The report, which spotted the light on such crimes in the first place and raised diplomatic issues after the Swedish prime minister (at that time) refused to apologies, led to restrictions on Swedish journalists.
“The discussion here is not only about organ theft, but also about the complete retention of bodies. This is one aspect among several in a media campaign to highlight a noble issue, which involves the detention of complete martyr bodies, not just organ theft. This issue has escalated over the past years, from 36 martyrs detained in occupation refrigerators in February 2019 to 72 martyrs in February 2021, and 93 martyrs in February 2022, reaching 105 martyrs in April 2022. The number of detained martyrs in cemeteries has reached 256, including 9 children, 3 female martyrs, and 8 prisoners who died in occupation prisons.” — Translated word for word.
In her book “On Their Dead Bodies,” Dr. Meira Weiss, the Israeli doctor and anthropology expert, stated the harvesting of the organs and mentioned that in the period between 1996 and 2002, Dr. Weiss was at the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv to do scientific research, and there she saw how the organs were getting stolen, especially from Palestinian corpses.
She said, “During my time at the institute, I witnessed how they would ‘take’ organs from a Palestinian body and not ‘take’ anything from the soldiers in return.” She added, “They would take corneas, skin, and heart valves, while noting that non-professionals would not notice the absence of these organs as they would place something plastic in place of the corneas and ‘take’ the skin from the back so that the family wouldn’t see it. In addition, the bodies of detained martyrs are used in medical colleges at Israeli universities for research purposes.” Weiss confirmed that “in the first Intifada, the army effectively allowed the institute to extract organs from Palestinians under a military procedure that required the autopsy of a Palestinian prisoner. The autopsy procedure was accompanied by organ removal, which was used by the Israeli Skin Bank established in 1985 to treat burns suffered by Israeli soldiers. This was after the Chief Rabbinate Council issued a ruling legitimizing it, which led to saving the lives of many Israelis who were injured during attacks on Palestinian citizens, continuous assaults, and wars — at the expense of Palestinian martyrs, according to specialized Israeli medical sources for burn treatment.”
Weiss also confirms the use of organs stolen by other organ banks in the Israeli occupation state for transplantation, research, and medical education. She added that many institute workers discussed during the interviews conducted by Weiss the period of the first Intifada, from 1987 to 1993, describing it as “good days” when organs were harvested permanently and freely, compared to any other period.
The Israeli Ministry of Health sent a written response to Al Jazeera, stating that “it used to happen.” However, today they claim that organs are taken according to the law and with prior consent, without specifying which entity issues the approvals: whether it is the courts in the occupation state, its army, or its administrative and political institutions. On November 23, 2015, the Israeli Channel 2 aired an investigative report revealing that the Israeli Institute of Forensic Medicine was involved in stealing organs from the bodies of Palestinian martyrs detained by the Israeli occupation. The investigation included testimonies from former head of the Israeli Institute of Forensic Medicine, Yehuda Hiss, acknowledging that human organs, tissues, and skin were taken from the bodies of Palestinian martyrs without the knowledge or consent of their families.
In 2008, the American network CNN published a report revealing that Israel is considered the largest global center for illegal organ trafficking. The report also revealed Israel’s involvement in the crime of killing Palestinians in order to steal their internal organs and benefit from them illegally, and to trade them in an illegal international network. Israel is the only country that holds the bodies of martyrs, and it follows this as a policy, in mass graves.
In a report published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on February 27, 2016, the Israeli occupation state admitted that it had “lost” dozens of bodies of Palestinian martyrs. The newspaper quoted statements from sources in the Israeli judicial and security systems about the loss of 121 bodies of martyrs held by the occupation authorities since the 1990s, according to a report by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). These sources confirmed that there is no information about a large portion of the bodies of martyrs, some of which have been held by the Israeli occupation state since the 1990s. According to a senior official in the Israeli Ministry of Justice, “The truth must be told, a portion of the bodies have been lost … and the task now is to make a decision about who is responsible.”
It is also worth noting that the burial of the martyrs was not organized, and that some of it was carried out with the help of private companies, one of which closed and shredded the documents and documents related to the burial.
The issue of the detention of the bodies of the martyrs is a human issue, as it is an unethical occupation practice that comes as part of the biopolitical policies — policies of domination and control that aim to dominate the Palestinian body alive and dead, and contradict the dignity of the Palestinian human being in his life and death. These practices, which Weiss describes in her book “On Their Dead Bodies” as racist for distinguishing between “us” and “them,” violate the second paragraph of Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for Indigenous Peoples, and contradict the rules for dealing with the bodies of war casualties stipulated by customary international humanitarian law. In addition, the Israeli occupation state violates several rights protected by international human rights law by detaining the bodies of the martyrs in refrigerators and mass graves, such as the right to dignity, the right to family life, religious and cultural freedom, and the prohibition of all forms of treatment or punishment that are cruel, degrading or inhuman.
The policy of detaining the bodies of the martyrs and imposing restrictive conditions on funeral ceremonies also represents collective punishment prohibited by Article 50 of the 1907 Hague Conventions and paragraphs 15 and 17 of the First Geneva Convention, which obliges the occupying power to deliver the bodies of the martyrs to their families and bury them with respect for their dignity according to their religious beliefs as much as possible, Article 27 of the Third Geneva Convention, Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and the First Protocol of 1977. The UN Committee against Torture considered the practice of detaining bodies to amount to prohibited ill-treatment, and called for justice and accountability to put an end to the impunity of the Israeli occupying state.
The official institutions of the Israeli occupation state, including the Israeli army, the National Insurance Institute, and the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute, refuse to provide the necessary information about the detained bodies. The detention of these bodies and the refusal of the Israeli authorities to disclose their location may, under international law, amount to the definition of enforced disappearance as set forth in the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
The Israeli occupation state has been using the detention of the bodies of Palestinian martyrs since 1948 (where one of the four cemeteries that have been revealed in recent years, the “Jisr Banat Ya’qub” cemetery located in a military area at the junction of the borders of Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria in the 1948 territories, contains the remains of hundreds of Palestinians and Lebanese killed by the Israeli occupation during the 1982 war). The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the military commander in the Israeli occupation state is authorized to detain the bodies of Palestinian martyrs and temporarily bury them for the purpose of using them in the future as bargaining chips.
In 2022, members of the Knesset are rushing to legislate a law that would empower the Israeli police to detain the bodies of martyrs. There is no legal basis in the Israeli occupation state for this authority, which violates international and humanitarian laws in its nature and practice.
The psychological effects of the punishment of detaining the bodies of martyrs on their families need to be highlighted in the media. This issue and its long-term implications are not just a humiliating practice that has sparked much legal, media, and moral controversy about the theft of the organs and skin of martyrs, their detention in refrigerators at a temperature of -40 degrees Celsius, and/or in mass graves, some of which may have been completely removed from existence due to soil erosion. In addition, the way in which martyrs are buried is often done by burying them in sand and mud without a concrete barrier, or by burying more than one martyr in the same hole, which may include martyrs of both men and women.
In light of the tightening of the procedures imposed by the Israeli occupation authorities for the delivery of bodies, especially in occupied Jerusalem, which include delivery after midnight and the requirement of immediate burial to prevent the families of the martyr or the Palestinian authorities from performing an autopsy on the bodies to investigate the issue of organ theft and skin, and in the presence of a limited number of relatives, in addition to the parents paying a fine of up to six thousand dollars, it becomes necessary to follow up on this file as a gross violation of international and humanitarian law, as a collective punishment against an unarmed people, and as accountability for the legitimacy of the occupation itself and as a call for its end.
Other articles related to this story and other similar articles reporting stories, facts, and tragedies can be found all over the internet. Unfortunately, though, most of them can only be found written in Arabic, and that’s why, in my opinion, you don’t see these kinds of reports getting the necessary attention, especially within foreign countries.
in an article posted by The Guardian called “Doctor admits Israeli pathologists harvested organs without consent,” reporting the scandal of the skin bank.
Here is a video on TikTok giving a brief summary of the previous report.
And here is the report from the Israeli channel №12:
Here is some translated parts from the documentary.
Also, here a translation of the the previous article: (the translation may not be 100% accurate but I tried my best)
Later, a report by Karsten Riise called “Israeli Organ Traffic: An embarrassing story updated Previous accusations of theft of organs” was published in Danish in November 2010, which was translated later on to English, backing his report by Donald Boström article in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet on August 17, 2009. In his report, he made the following points:
- Previous accusations of organ theft
- Dr. Hiss testimony
- Later information on the handling of organs at Abu Kabir
- Where does Israel’s organ-scandal stop?
- April 2016 Update
You can read the full report here.
You may also want to look up this thread.
NOTE!!! All the content mentioned in this article are reserved to its original author.
Do not forget the innocent lives whom are getting killed in this genocide in your prayers. Free Palestine.
