63 Israeli call for boycott of Ikea, Volvo over Sweden's Organ Harvesting articles

(1) Israeli call for boycott of Ikea, Volvo over Sweden's Organ Harvesting articles
(2) BUT Israeli university prof calls for boycott of Israel for being an "apartheid state"
(3) Body Snatchers Are Back, by Israel Shamir
(4) An English translation of Donald Boström's article in a leading Swedish paper
(5) "Never Forget" Jewish suffering; "Never Mind" the trauma suffered by Palestinians

(1) Israeli call for boycott of Ikea, Volvo over Sweden's Organ Harvesting articles

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251145107187&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Aug 24, 2009 23:22 | Updated Aug 25, 2009 0:55

10,000 urge boycott of Ikea, Volvo

By RON FRIEDMAN AND BLOOMBERG

The Ikea home products retailer and Volvo Cars are among the companies being targeted for a boycott by Israelis angry over a Swedish newspaper article that alleged IDF soldiers harvested organs from slain Palestinians.

More than 10,000 Israelis have signed an online petition in the past two days that was set up after the Swedish government declined a request by Israel to officially condemn the article, published by the Aftonbladet daily on August 17.

The boycott threat puts further strain on relations between the two nations, after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Sunday the article was a "blood libel" and that he expected the Swedish government to condemn it.

"I have as little right as any other cabinet minister to act against a publishing decision, no matter what I may think of what has been published," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt wrote on his Web site on Saturday.

"What worries and grieves me the most is some of the reactions - not least in other countries - that this decision has led to," he said, referring to the decision to publish the article.

The boycott petition was set up Moran Hajbi, an Israeli army reservist who told the Ynet news Web site, "I am simply a citizen who cares, and cannot stand idly by in light of the publication of the Swedish blood libel."

The article, by journalist Donald Bostrom, alleged Israeli soldiers killed Palestinian men and removed their organs in 1992. Bostrom said in Aftonbladet that he doesn't have any evidence of the allegations, only that he can prove that Palestinians he has interviewed made such claims.

Ikea has one store in Israel, just east of Netanya, franchised to an investors' group headed by New York-based businessman Matthew Bronfman that is in the process of setting up a second outlet.

Ikea Israel CEO Shlomi Gabai spoke out against the proposed boycott on Army Radio on Monday, saying, "As an Israeli, I am also mad when other countries boycott Israeli manufactured goods; therefore I resent the attempt to tie Ikea to the Swedish article in any way. I bluntly reject the attempt to link business to politics. Ikea is a commercial entity and will continue to be such. The store in Israel has loyally served the Israeli public for years. We support 500 employees and their families, and once the store in Rishon Lezion is opened we'll support 1,000 and I'm proud of it."

Business at the store hasn't suffered because of the controversy. Gabai reported near record sales on Sunday, and on Monday morning the store was full.

"There's no need to involve politics in everything," said one customer upon leaving the store with a trunk full of merchandise. "We spent nearly NIS 4,000 on furniture for our new apartment and I don't see it as a political statement."

Volvo Cars, owned by Ford Motor Co., sells about 1,100 automobiles in Israel every year, company spokeswoman Maria Bohlin said by telephone from Sweden. "We haven't noticed any difference yet, but we'll await the situation and see how it develops."

Swedish exports to Israel increased by 39 percent between 2007 and 2008 and amounted to $483 million last year, according to information on the Swedish Embassy's Web site.

"This boycott initiative is needless and stupid," Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said in a telephone interview. Palmor added that if the Swedish government doesn't condemn the article, Israel will make it a central topic of discussions with Bildt on his scheduled visit to Jerusalem next week.

Meanwhile on Monday evening, several demonstrators stood outside the embassy in Tel Aviv to protest the Swedish government's failure to denounce the Aftonbladet article.

The demonstrators, representatives of Zionist social movements Im Tirtzu and Hatikva, wore T-shirts with the images of Theodor Herzl and Joseph Trumpeldor; held Israeli flags and banners reading "Anti-Semitism under the cover of free speech" and posed for the press photographers, who nearly outnumbered them.

The protesters also set up a stall on which they placed a pot full of red paint into which they dipped matzot. A sign on the stall read, "Palestinian organs for sale here." The stall was a macabre reference to medieval blood libels about Jews killing Christian children so they can use their blood to make matza.

One demonstrator lowered the Swedish flag from the mast in front of the building.

"We are here in front of the Swedish Embassy to protest against the new blood libel against the Jews, in its 2009 version," Im Tirtzu spokesman Amit Barak said. "This ugly accusation against the IDF is nothing but a new take on old and familiar anti-Semitism. We expect the Swedish foreign minister and the Swedish government to take a firm stand against it and expose it for what it is instead of hiding behind the excuse of free speech."

Barak said his group was pleased by the determination of the Israeli government in face of a developing diplomatic crisis with Sweden.

"Finally the Foreign Ministry is standing up for Israel and the IDF," he said. "If I was in charge, I'd call the Israeli ambassador back from Sweden. Let him rest here for a while."

Im Tirtzu is a campus-based organization whose main objective is to "return Zionist values to the public debate."

"I see a direct line between the lies that where published in the Swedish newspaper and the types of cowardly and baseless accusations made by Israeli organizations like Shovrim Shtika," said Barak, referring to a organization of reserve soldiers who have accused the IDF of committing war crimes in Gaza.

"There is no doubt that if there are organizations here in Israel that call Israeli soldiers murderers, it provides fertile soil for similar accusations by foreign organizations."

The lone public official to arrive on the scene was Likud MK Carmel Shama. He arrived after the protest was already under way did not appear to have been recognized by the protesters.

"I fully support what these young people are doing," said Shama. "It's time for the Swedish government to stop using freedom of the press as an excuse and present a clear condemnation of the article. We don't expect an apology, but a plain condemnation is in order."

(2) BUT Israeli university prof calls for boycott of Israel for being an "apartheid state"

From: Kristoffer Larsson <kristoffer.larsson@sobernet.nu> Date: 26.08.2009 03:01 PM

http://jta.org/news/article/2009/08/24/1007420/israeli-university-prof-calls-for-boycott

Israeli university prof calls for boycott

August 24, 2009

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- A Ben-Gurion University professor called for a boycott of Israel for being an "apartheid state," causing a stir in Israel.

"The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state," Neve Gordon, a political science professor, wrote in an Op-Ed last Friday in the L.A. Times. "It is therefore clear to me that the only way to counter the apartheid trend in Israel is through massive international pressure... I consequently have decided to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that was launched by Palestinian activists in July 2005 and has since garnered widespread support around the globe."

Ben-Gurion University President Rivka Carmi disavowed the comments. "We are appalled by Dr. Neve Gordon's irresponsible remarks, that morally deserve to be completely and utterly condemned," Carmi said in a statement. "We disapprove of Gordon's disastrous views and reject his cynical exploitation of the freedom of speech in Israel and the university."

But the Association for Civil Rights in Israel condemned Carmi for curbing freedom of speech by denouncing Gordon's Op-Ed.

Meanwhile, supporters of the university living in the Los Angeles area threatened to withhold their donations from the university, according to Ha'aretz, which cited a letter sent to the university's president from Yaakov Dayan, Israel's consul general in Los Angeles.

On an interview with Ynet, Gordon said he did not mean a wholesale boycott against Israel, but a gradual one that would begin with a boycott of products produced in the West Bank  and against companies who support Jewish settlements in the area.

(3) Body Snatchers Are Back, by Israel Shamir

From: Sandhya Jain <sandhya206@bol.net.in> Date: 25.08.2009 06:57 AM

Body Snatchers Are Back

Israel Shamir

http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Body_Snatchers.htm

In the Turkish blockbuster action movie Valley of the Wolves, an American Jewish doctor in Abu Ghraib prison gently removes a kidney out of live and suffering Arab prisoner and places it into a special vessel with the label "To Tel Aviv", thus reinforcing the Israeli-American bond of eternal friendship. Real life imitates cinema, as we learn from the dreadful story of Palestinian youths being hunted for their inner organs by that most moral army in the world, Israel's, as published by a leading Swedish newspaper [read its English translation below]

Donald Boström, a Swedish photographer who worked in the West Bank in 1992, was tipped off by UN officials to follow the bloody trail of Israeli soldiers who had kidnapped young Palestinians and returned their dead bodies five days later "with a slit from the abdomen up to the chin." The families in the West Bank and in Gaza felt that they knew exactly what had happened: "Our sons were used as involuntary organ donors; they disappeared for a number of days only to be returned in the dark of night, dead and autopsied. Why did they keep their bodies for five days before letting us bury them? What happened to their bodies in the meantime? Why are they performing autopsies, against our will, when the cause of death is obvious? Why were their bodies returned at night time? Why was this done with a military escort? Why was the area closed off during the funeral? Why was the power supply interrupted?"

These questions continued to haunt Boström. He took gruesome pictures of the returned bodies. Like Vanunu, he smuggled his films abroad. When back in Sweden, he offered the story to Dagens Nyheter, a liberal newspaper which, incidentally, is owned by the Jewish Bonnier family. DN refused to publish it. The story was laid to rest until now, when the Social Democrat newspaper Aftonbladet decided to let it run.

In Israel, the reaction was hysterical. The country is in danger of busting its guts in rage. Huge pressure has been exerted upon Swedish authorities to condemn the newspaper, to punish the offending author and to beg forgiveness. The Swedish Ambassador in Tel Aviv, a member of the rich and influential Jewish family Bonnier who incidentally own the majority of Swedish newspapers, TV networks and cinemas, expressed her 'shock and disapproval' on a website. Her speedy acceptance of the Tel Aviv diktat misfired. The Swedish government rejected her interference with the freedom of press; the editors of Aftonbladet insisted on their right to say what they find fit and called for an international inquiry.

This proud stance lasted but a day or two. Carl Bildt, the Swedish Foreign Minister, was discomfited by Israel's intention to cancel his scheduled visit and had already written in a blog that "such articles can cause anti-Semitism, and instigation is against the Swedish law". However, because he did not cry uncle in the way Netanyahu and Lieberman had demanded, the rage and hysterics in Tel Aviv increased all the more.

It is easier to express 'outrage about the old canard' than to answer the questions posed by Boström. The facts are disturbing, and the accusations are not new. There were too many reports of such goings on, beside the cases mentioned by the Aftonbladet. Knesset Members Ahmed Tibi and Hashem Mahmid accused the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine of expropriating the inner parts of Palestinian corpses. They said that Palestinian doctors have complained about receiving the bodies of their dead emptied of their innards. Israeli newspapers reported that in 2007 three Palestinian teenagers were killed near Khan Younes in Gaza Strip and their bodies were returned to their parents all cut and brutalised six days later. Israel often does not even return the dead bodies of Palestinians to their families but has them buried in a secret cemetery. This causes even more suspicions. 

Worse, it fits into a larger pattern.

All over the world, Israel and Israelis are involved in trafficking human flesh, this modern form of cannibalism. Beside the case of the New Jersey ring mentioned in the Boström's article, there are plenty others.

Turkey: An Israeli professor Zaki Shapira was arrested in Turkey for allegedly cutting into live Turks for spare parts, reported the notoriously anti-Semitic paper Jerusalem Post.

South Africa: Another anti-Semitic paper, the New York Times, reported on an Israeli trafficking ring active from South Africa to Brazil.

Brazil: An Israeli officer, Gedalya Tauber, was arrested in Brazil for inducing the poor to part with their body parts. He spilled the beans about activity of his fellow countrymen.

The Ukraine: The Jerusalem Post reported the arrest of "an Israeli illegal organ-smuggling ring" that flew their donors and recipients to the Ukraine.

In many cases, Israelis were the doctors, traffickers, smugglers and recipients of the body parts, as the Jewish state is the only country in the world where the state pays for, and best doctors are legally engaged in, the transplanting of illegally obtained organs, reported Ha'aretz. The next step was the evolution of international networks for this sort of traffic. Jews are well positioned to get involved in this sordid business: there are many Jewish doctors, there are many ties between Jewish communities in different countries, and there are few moral inhibitions.

This lack of moral inhibitions allowed a leading Khabbad rabbi, Yitzhak Ginzburg, to give his religious permission to a Jew to take a liver from a goy even without his consent. He said that "a Jew is entitled to extract the liver from a goy if he needs it, for the life of a Jew is more valuable than the life of a goy, likewise the life of a goy is more valuable than the life of an animal."

Modern Israelis have forgotten their faith, but have retained this lack of inhibition. An Israeli business newspaper, The Marker, has published an opinion piece by an Israeli lawyer justifying the trade in body organs, for "organs are just commodity, and so they can be bought and sold like any commodity in an open market".

The distance between kidneys bought and snatched is not that big: if organs are "just a commodity", surely it is permissible to take them from Palestinians, just as it is 'permitted' to take from Palestinians centuries-old olive trees while building the Wall.

Indignation is easy, but it is not so easy to prove that the Israelis, who do not hesitate to break arms and legs and pour napalm on schoolchildren, do draw a line about getting some profit from Palestinian innards. Aftonbladet's demand for an international enquiry is reasonable: if the Israelis have done nothing wrong (beyond murdering hundreds of young men), they have nothing to fear from an international investigation. Yet Israel refused UN enquiry commissions permission to visit Jenin after the 2002 massacre and Gaza after the 2009 massacre.

For Israel, the most upsetting part of this affair was the breach made in the wall. I do not mean the monstrous Sharon's Wall protecting the biggest Jewish ghetto in the Middle East, but the wall of media control which protects it overseas. Jews buy media all over the world not for fun, and not for profit, but for the influence it has over minds. This is the case in Sweden, where members of its tiny Jewish community own newspapers, magazines, publishing houses and even Swedish Hollywood - SFI. This media actively promotes the neo-liberal policies of privatisation, commodification, immigrant influx, dismantling the welfare state – in short, policies that are good for wealthy Jews.

Israeli representatives work hard to keep reporting from the Middle East under their control. A few years ago, the leading radical left magazine Ordfront published a thoughtful piece Israeli Regime Directs Swedish Media by Johannes Wahlström, telling of Israeli meddling with the Swedish press, of Israeli officials going to newspaper editors and to correspondents. In that article Donald Boström tells of the dreadful story he wanted to tell, but he couldn't get through the wall of pro-Israeli censorship in the Swedish media. 

Israel is not the only country suspected of such nefarious activities. Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor at the Hague tribunal for Balkan crimes, wrote in her 2008 book The Hunt: Me and War Criminals that under the aegis of the Kosovo Liberation Army, this ally of NATO and the US, hundreds of young Serb prisoners were allegedly taken by truck from Kosovo to northern Albania where their organs were removed. Some prisoners were sewn up after having kidneys removed until the moment they were killed for other vital organs. Carla Del Ponte had seen the house where such surgeries were done and had met with the people involved, one of whom "personally made an organ delivery" to an Albanian airport for transport abroad.

However, Carla del Ponte's accusation against Albanians did not cause such a stir, and nobody condemned her as "anti-Albanian", nor would she care if somebody had, for it is perfectly all right to be anti-anybody as long as not anti-Jewish. The Jews have a potent weapon in their "anti-Semitism" label. Or do they?

Could it be that the useful-for-Israel fear of anti-Semitism does not work like a charm anymore? This is possible. The Cairo speech of Obama apparently has had no direct consequences; Obama tried to apply pressure to Israel in order to freeze the settlements, but in vain. Did he fail? It is too early to judge, as Chou En Lai was wont to say. Such changes rarely occur by the wave of a magic wand … they take time.

Recent publications on the Jewish criminal gang in New Jersey, attacks on Goldman Sachs, medals for Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu, an award to Felicia Langer, the collapse of the pro-Jewish socialist party and the appearance of an anti-zionist party in France, the Boström article in Aftonbladet – all are small and separate incidents, but together they imply that the change is coming. Swedes, French, Germans and even New Jerseyans are no longer afraid of Washington coming at them like sixteen tons in defence of Zionists, as would have been the case in the days of George W. Bush. Obama even refused to appoint a new anti-anti-semitic commissar.

This thought frightens the Tel Aviv government more than anything. If today they let the Swedes get away with it, tomorrow there will be somebody else, and then the fear of the Jews will be assigned to the category of unmanly unrealistic fears, like fear of mice. 

Second Ending

More importantly, Israeli outrage is a proof that - despite approval for it by radical Cabbalists and neo-liberals - transplantation of human organs is an immoral dreadful thing, too close to cannibalism, and we all know that.

Yes, it is awful if Israeli soldiers tear kidneys out of Palestinians and kill them afterwards. But it is equally awful, if a kind doctor removes a kidney out of a Detroit mechanic whose house was repossessed by a gentle banker, or out of a Ukrainian worker who was sacked by a polite oligarch, or out of an Indian farmer who has to pay his debt to Monsanto.

Every poor man on the planet is a Palestinian – though the means of his dispossession may vary. This kind of thing should be stopped. The human body is sacred. These operations are too expensive and can't be justified. Mankind should overcome its fear of death. We live and we die. There is no reason to waste thousands of dollars prolonging a life by expensive operations if this money can be used for feeding the starving. More about this later...

(4) An English translation of Donald Boström's article in a leading Swedish paper

From: Sandhya Jain <sandhya206@bol.net.in> Date: 25.08.2009 06:57 AM

An English translation of the famous article in a leading Swedish paper.

http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Body_Snatchers.htm

Our sons plundered for their organs

Donald Boström

http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab

You could call me a "matchmaker," said Levy Yitzhak Rosenbaum, from Brooklyn, USA, in a secret recording with an FBI-agent whom he believed to be a client. Ten days later, at the end of July this year, Rosenbaum was arrested and a vast, Sopranos-like, imbroglio of money-laundering and illegal organ-trade was revealed.

Rosenbaum's matchmaking had nothing to do with romance. It was all about buying and selling kidneys from Israel on the black market. Rosenbaum says that he buys the kidneys for 10,000 dollars, from poor people. He then proceeds to sell the organs to desperate patients in the States for 160,000 dollars. The accusations have shaken the American transplantation business. If they are true it means that organ trafficking is documented for the first time in the US, experts tell the New Jersey Real-Time News.

On the question of how many organs he has sold Rosenbaum replies: "Quite a lot. And I have never failed," he boasts. The business has been running for quite some time. Francis Delmonici, professor of transplant surgery at Harvard and member of the National Kidney Foundation's Board of Directors, tells the same newspaper that organ-trafficking, similar to the one reported from Israel, is carried out in other places of the world as well. 5-6,000 operations a year, about ten per cent of the world's kidney transplants are carried out illegally, according to Delmonici.

Countries suspected of these activities are Pakistan, the Philippines and China, where the organs are allegedly taken from executed prisoners. But Palestinians also harbour strong suspicions against Israel for seizing young men and having them serve as the country's organ reserve - a very serious accusation, with enough question marks to motivate the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to start an investigation about possible war crimes.

Israel has repeatedly been under fire for its unethical ways of dealing with organs and transplants. France was among the countries that ceased organ collaboration with Israel in the nineties. Jerusalem Post wrote that "the rest of the European countries are expected to follow France's example shortly."

Half of the kidneys transplanted to Israelis since the beginning of the 2000s have been bought illegally from Turkey, Eastern Europe or Latin America. Israeli health authorities have full knowledge of this business but do nothing to stop it. At a conference in 2003 it was shown that Israel is the only western country with a medical profession that doesn't condemn the illegal organ trade. The country takes no legal measures against doctors participating in the illegal business - on the contrary, chief medical officers of Israel's big hospitals are involved in most of the illegal transplants, according to Dagens Nyheter (December 5, 2003).

In the summer of 1992, Ehud Olmert, then minister of health, tried to address the issue of organ shortage by launching a big campaign aimed at having the Israeli public register for postmortal organ donation. Half a million pamphlets were spread in local newspapers. Ehud Olmert himself was the first person to sign up. A couple of weeks later the Jerusalem Post reported that the campaign was a success. No fewer than 35,000 people had signed up. Prior to the campaign it would have been 500 in a normal month. In the same article, however, Judy Siegel, the reporter, wrote that the gap between supply and demand was still large. 500 people were in line for a kidney transplant, but only 124 transplants could be performed. Of 45 people in need of a new liver, only three could be operated on in Israel.

While the campaign was running, young Palestinian men started to disappear from villages in the West Bank and Gaza. After five days Israeli soldiers would bring them back dead, with their bodies ripped open. 

Talk of the bodies terrified the population of the occupied territories. There were rumours of a dramatic increase of young men disappearing, with ensuing nightly funerals of autopsied bodies. 

I was in the area at the time, working on a book. On several occasions I was approached by UN staff concerned about the developments. The persons contacting me said that organ theft definitely occurred but that they were prevented from doing anything about it. On an assignment from a broadcasting network I then travelled around interviewing a great number of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza - meeting parents who told of how their sons had been deprived of organs before being killed. One example that I encountered on this eerie trip was the young stone-thrower Bilal Ahmed Ghanan.  

It was close to midnight when the motor roar from an Israeli military column sounded from the outskirts of Imatin, a small village in the northern parts of the West Bank. The two thousand inhabitants were awake. They were still, waiting, like silent shadows in the dark, some lying upon roofs, others hiding behind curtains, walls, or trees that provided protection during the curfew but still offered a full view toward what would become the grave for the first martyr of the village.

The military had interrupted the electricity and the area was now a closed-off military zone - not even a cat could move outdoors without risking its life. The overpowering silence of the dark night was only interrupted by quiet sobbing. I don't remember if our shivering was due to the cold or to the tension. Five days earlier, on May 13, 1992, an Israeli special force had used the village's carpentry workshop for an ambush. The person they were assigned to put out of action was Bilal Ahmed Ghanan, one of the stone-throwing Palestinian youngsters who made life difficult for the Israeli soldiers.

As one of the leading stone-throwers Bilal Ghanan had been wanted by the military for a couple of years. Together with other stone-throwing boys he hid in the Nablus mountains, with no roof over his head. Getting caught meant torture and death for these boys - they had to stay in the mountains at all costs.

On May 13 Bilal made an exception, when for some reason, he walked unprotected by the carpentry workshop. Not even Talal, his older brother, knows why he took this risk. Maybe the boys were out of food and needed to restock.

Everything went according to plan for the Israeli special force. The soldiers stubbed their cigarettes, put away their cans of Coca-Cola, and calmly aimed through the broken window. When Bilal was close enough they needed only to pull the triggers. The first shot hit him in the chest. According to villagers who witnessed the incident he was subsequently shot with one bullet in each leg. Two soldiers then ran down from the carpentry workshop and shot Bilal once in the stomach. Finally, they grabbed him by his feet and dragged him up the twenty stone steps of the workshop stair.

Villagers say that people from both the UN and the Red Crescent were close by, heard the discharge and came to look for wounded people in need of care. Some arguing took place as to who should take care of the victim. Discussions ended with Israeli soldiers loading the badly wounded Bilal in a jeep and driving him to the outskirts of the village, where a military helicopter waited. The boy was flown to a destination unknown to his family. Five days later he came back, dead and wrapped in green hospital fabric.

A villager recognized Captain Yahya, the leader of the military column who had transported Bilal from the post-mortem center Abu Kabir, outside of Tel Aviv, to the place for his final rest. "Captain Yahya is the worst of them all," the villager whispered in my ear. After Yahya had unloaded the body and changed the green fabric for a light cotton one, some male relatives of the victim were chosen by the soldiers to do the job of digging and mixing cement.

Together with the sharp noises from the shovels we could hear laughter from the soldiers who, as they waited to go home, exchanged some jokes. As Bilal was put in the grave his chest was uncovered. Suddenly it became clear to the few people present just what kind of abuse the boy had been exposed to. Bilal was not by far the first young Palestinian to be buried with a slit from his abdomen up to his chin.

The families in the West Bank and in Gaza felt that they knew exactly what had happened: "Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors," relatives of Khaled from Nablus told me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin and the uncles of Mahmud and Nafes from Gaza, who had all disappeared for a number of days only to return at night, dead and autopsied. 

-      Why are they keeping the bodies for up to five days before they let us bury them? What happened to the bodies during that time? Why are they performing autopsy, against our will, when the cause of death is obvious? Why are the bodies returned at night? Why is it done with a military escort? Why is the area closed off during the funeral? Why is the electricity interrupted? Nafes's uncle was upset and he had a lot of questions.

The relatives of the dead Palestinians no longer harboured any doubts as to the reasons for the killings, but the spokesperson for the Israeli army claimed that the allegations of organ theft were lies. All the Palestinian victims go through autopsy on a routine basis, he said. Bilal Ahmed Ghanem was one of 133 Palestinians killed in various ways that year. According to the Palestinian statistics the causes of death were: shot in the street, explosion, tear gas, deliberately run over, hanged in prison, shot in school, killed at home et cetera. The 133 people killed were between four months to 88 years old. Only half of them, 69 victims, went through post-mortem examination. The routine autopsy of killed Palestinians - of which the army spokesperson was talking - has no bearing on the reality in the occupied territories. The questions remain.

We know that Israel has a great need for organs, that there is a vast and illegal trade of organs which has been running for many years now, that the authorities are aware of it and that doctors in managing positions at the big hospitals participate, as well as civil servants at various levels. We also know that young Palestinian men disappeared, that they were brought back after five days, at night, under tremendous secrecy, stitched back together after having been cut from abdomen to chin.

It's time to bring clarity to this macabre business, to shed light on what is going on and what has taken place in the territories occupied by Israel since the Intifada began.

Donald Boström

(5) "Never Forget" Jewish suffering; "Never Mind" the trauma suffered by Palestinians

From: ummyakoub <ummyakoub@yahoo.com>  Date: 26.08.2009 04:44 PM

Yad Vashem fires employee who dared to show the irony of Deir Yassin being in sight of Yad Vashem

Daniel McGowan - mcgowan@hws.edu
Deir Yassin Remembered

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

http://makeheadline.blogspot.com/2009/08/wvns-fired-for-mentioning-deir-yassin.html

Yad Vashem, the most famous Holocaust Museum in the world, has fired an instructor who compared the trauma of Jewish Holocaust survivors with the trauma experienced by the Palestinian people in the Naqba.
Itamar Shapira, 29, of Jerusalem, was fired from his job at Yad Vashem, where he had worked for the past three and a half years as a tour guide. Shapira confirmed that he had spoken to visitors about the 1948 massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin, which lies in clear sight 1,400 meters to the north of the Children's Museum at Yad Vashem.

While Yad Vashem visitors are taught to "Never Forget" the trauma suffered by Jews under the Nazis, they are encouraged to "Never Mind" the trauma suffered by Palestinians under Zionists building a Jewish state on lands where Palestinians had lived for centuries.

Shapira stated, "I said there were people who lived on this land and mentioned that there are other traumas that provide other nations with motivation."

Yad Vashem's position is that the Holocaust and Jewish suffering cannot be compared to any other event. While there are hundreds of memorials for Jews, there is not even a sign post at Deir Yassin, the emblem of Palestinian dispossession and ethnic cleansing.

Deir Yassin Remembered was founded in 1995 at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. DYR works toward building a truth and reconciliation center at Deir Yassin. We ask that you open your hearts and wallets and make a donation to Deir Yassin Remembered, a charitable and educational not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

Deir Yassin Remembered
c/o Daniel McGowan or PayPal DYR1948@deiryassin.org
300 Pulteney Street
Geneva, New York 14456
===

Yad Vashem fires employee who compared Holocaust to Nakba

By Yoav Stern

Last update - 10:59 23/04/2009

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=1080456

Yad Vashem has fired an instructor who compared the trauma of Jewish Holocaust survivors with the trauma experienced by the Palestinian people in Israel's War of Independence.

Itamar Shapira, 29, of Jerusalem, was fired before Passover from his job as a docent at the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, after a teacher with a group of yeshiva students from Efrat made a complaint. Shapira had worked at Yad Vashem for three and a half years.

This is the first time that Yad Vashem has fired a guide over political differences, an institution official said Wednesday.

Shapira confirmed, in a telephone conversation with Haaretz, that he had spoken to visitors about the 1948 massacre at Deir Yassin.

He said he did so because the ruins of the Arab village, today a part of Jerusalem's Givat Shaul neighborhood, can be seen as one leaves Yad Vashem.

"Yad Vashem talks about the Holocaust survivors' arrival in Israel and about creating a refuge here for the world's Jews. I said there were people who lived on this land and mentioned that there are other traumas that provide other nations with motivation," Shapira said.

"The Holocaust moved us to establish a Jewish state and the Palestinian nation's trauma is moving it to seek self-determination, identity, land and dignity, just as Zionism sought these things," he said.

A Yad Vashem official said the institution objects to any political use of the Holocaust, especially by a docent working for it.

The institution's position is that the Holocaust cannot be compared to any other event and that every visitor can draw his own political conclusions.

Yad Vashem spokeswoman Iris Rosenberg said that after holding a hearing for Shapira, at which he refused to accept his superiors' instructions and change his teaching methods, it was decided to terminate his job as a guide in the institute's school for Holocaust studies.

"Yad Vashem would have acted unprofessionally had Itamar Shapira continued his educational work for the institute," Rosenberg said.

Yad Vashem employs workers and volunteers from the entire political and social spectrum, who know how to separate their personal position from their work, she said.

Shapira said Yad Vashem chooses to examine only some of the events that took place in the War of Indpendence. "It is being hypocritical. I only tried to expose the visitors to the facts, not to political conclusions. If Yad Vashem chooses to ignore the facts, for example the massacre at Dir Yassin, or the Nakba ["The Catastrophe," the Palestinians' term for what happened to them after 1948], it means that it's afraid of something and that its historic approach is flawed," Shapira said.