“Israel warned of a harsh response on Thursday afternoon after a Thai greenhouse worker was killed when a Kassam rocket fired by Gaza terrorists hit the Netiv Ha’asara area.

The man, in his 30s, was evacuated to Ashkelon’s Barzilai Hospital, where doctors were forces to pronounce him dead.

A small Islamist faction calling itself Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for the attack.

In a statement e-mailed to reporters in Gaza, the al-Qaida-inspired faction said the attack was a response to Israel’s “Judaization” of Islamic holy places in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the West Bank.

Vice Premier Silvan Shalom warned that the attack would lead to a strong reaction, and said that Hamas was ultimately responsible.

“It is severe escalation,” said Shalom. “Israel will not return to the situation of before Operation Cast Lead. The response will be particulate fierce…I hope Hamas will learn a lesson.”

The attack came on the same day as a visit to Gaza by Europe’s top diplomat, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who had just crossed into the territory when the rocket was fired.
…
On Wednesday, two Kassam rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip, landing not far from Sderot.

Two people suffered from shock as a result of the blast, one of them a girl. They were treated by an MDA team and evacuated to a shock treatment center.”

In another example of dodgy journalism coming out of the Guardian, they originally chose to run a by-line of “Israel admits harvesting Palestinian organs.”.

It was subsequently changed, but the Guardian’s original headline was rather revealing of the prejudices found at that newspaper. In the article you will notice that the pathologists took organs from nearly everyone.

But that alone would not make a sufficiently dramatic headline, nor does it point out that the Israelis themselves brought up this issue and investigated it in a TV programme. The evidence is a bit obvious as the sources are written in Hebrew, and I am sure that even Guardian journalists realise which nation has that as its language?

The problem is, that the Guardian did not make any effort to give this story any context because that would require a degree of objectivity and journalistic competence from the Guardian, which it does not have around the subject of Israel or Israelis, so instead the article is used to slate Israelis.

It could have simply said, that there were insensitive and clumsy pathologists extracting organs from dead bodies that crossed their paths, including Israelis, IDF soldiers, etc.

However, that would not have been enough to make it into an issue for a national paper, so it was dressed up to have a quick swipe at Israelis along the way.

This is territory where we have been before.

Older readers will remember that British doctors did this very same thing, but with children.

Even though the activities at Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool caused outrage, I doubt the Guardian would have run an article entitled “British harvest organs of young children”.

That is the type of headline more suitable for tabloids or other rags.

In fact, the Guardian has a section dealing with the Alder Hey issue, but contrast their carefully considered language there, as opposed to the startling by-line that sought to indict Israelis and only Israelis for this practice.

Rather than merely criticise pathologists involved the Guardian attempted to widen the accusation against all Israelis.

That is the problem, the Guardian can write considered and thoughtful articles on the Alder Hey scandal, but when a similar situation arises in Israel it is used as a political stick to beat Israelis with, and any notion of thoughtful journalism is thrown out of the window.

I do wish the Guardian would ditch these prejudices and go back to quality journalism.

Anyone interested in the history of Alder Hey children’s hospital and the organs removed from children, without permission, should read the Royal Liverpool Children’s Inquiry Report summary of key findings and the main recommendations, with the fuller findings here.

Update 1: Organ removal and the illegal storage of the body parts are still an issue in Britain, as the Torygraph reports:

“More than 200 hospitals have been instructed to account for all the organs and human tissue being held in mortuaries and pathology labs, because of concerns that body parts are being stored illegally, without the consent of bereaved relatives.

The HTA has ordered the probe after finding five cases in which bodies which had been examined for post-mortem were released for burial or cremation without their brains.”

Update 2: A section at the Scotsman newspaper shows how important this issue is as an on-going problem and the natural distress that it causes parents and families.

Update 3: The BBC news site has a piece from 1999 concerning Bristol hospital:

“The Bristol Childrens’ Heart Action Group, a parents’ campaign group, says the hospital removed and retained the hearts of at least 170 hearts from children who died in operations over a 12-year period.”

Also, Organ removal: the legal background from 1999 too.

Update 4: I came across a version of this story on msnbc, but it seems that the feed could have come directly from AP. It is possible that the Guardian “tidied” it up before publishing. Astute readers will notice the wording here, compared with the AP story:

“Israel has admitted pathologists harvested organs from dead Palestinians, and others, without the consent of their families – a practice it said ended in the 1990s – it emerged at the weekend.”

The Guardian could have written “a practice that ended in the 1990s”, but rather they chose “…a practice it said ended in the 1990s…”. Insinuating that it is not a fact, just that it was “said”. Same old tricks.

Update 5: If you want to see how the racists come out and use this topic you need to look no further than this Anthony Lerman article.

Update 6: Yaacov Lozowick has more:

“Antisemitic allegations almost always start from some grain of fact. What makes them antisemitic (or even merely slander) isn’t the original grain of truth but the edifice built on it. In the Rostom blood libel earlier this year the slander was that IDF forces were regularly killing Palestinians so as to harvest their organs. The grain of truth uncovered here (which actually isn’t news at all, it has been known in Israel for years, which is one reason Hiss no longer heads the Abu Kabir institute) has nothing to do with those allegations, and doesn’t substantiate them in any way.

Actually, what we’ve got here is a fine litmus test to discover antisemites. Anyone who spins the true story in the direction Rostom took it are essentially setting themselves up. They need to be asked why they took that particular grain of truth in that particular direction.”

No sooner have they tried to demonize or attack some Israelis, than one of those smart Israelis produces a major scientific development.

So it is with Ada Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. She has just won the Nobel prize for chemistry, shared with two other academics who have made a breakthrough in the study of DNA and ribosome.

As the Times puts it:

“The research is also helping the design of antibiotics to treat people who are infected with a bacterium that has developed antibiotic resistance, for example, some of the strains of bacteria that cause tuberculosis.”

I wonder if anti-Israeli types will be boycotting the medical treatments that come out of Professor Yonath’s work? I seriously doubt it.

In other news, that anti-Israeli fanatic,Vanessa Redgrave, shows just how lazy bigots like her truly are? She argues ‘ “Tel Aviv is built on destroyed Palestinian villages.” True. ‘, little realizing how false that statement is. Tel Aviv was build in 1909 on sand dunes.

It takes a certain mentality to be so ill informed on the Middle East and in particular Tel Aviv, founded under Ottoman rule, long before 1948, but then again anti-Israeli types are often not too concerned with facts, science or basic history.

The original Hebrew version is here from Ynet. This is a JPost summary of that startling news story:

“In an article in the opinion section of the paper’s Website Sunday afternoon, a journalist under a pseudonym penned a story, complete with dateline, research and witness accounts in quotation marks, alleging that Sweden, in an effort to compete with salmon products from neighboring Norway, harvested the feet of Norwegian fishermen to extract the secret ingredient that – according to the article – makes the Swedish salmon dish more palatable: the fungi growing on Norwegian fishermen’s feet.

The Yediot story even names the Swedish army’s secret unit whose job it is to harvest the organs: Stinkande strumpor [Swedish for 'smelly socks']. “

Below is an imperfect Google translation into English which gives you the meat of these terrible allegations against the Swedes.

Obviously, there has been no comment from the Swedish government yet. Carl Bildt is notably silent on the matter.

An English version has been released:

“Arnolf Lillehammer, a resident of the Norwegian village of Idiben, located near the Swedish border, will never forget the last time he saw his father alive. “It happened just before the last summer,” Arnolf recounted. “The lake was about to freeze, and dad went out to fish in the afternoon. He asked me to help him clean the fish when he returns. After three hours we started to worry. The next day, after we found his boat, we realized something terrible had happened.”

Three weeks later, Arnolf’s fears were replaced by pure horror, after finding his father’s corpse buried in the snow, with both his feet cut off.

This was not the only disappearance in the area. In fact, dozens of cases of fishermen failing to return home at the end of the day were recorded in eastern Norway in recent years. The locals attributed the many disappearances to the harsh winter conditions; fierce snowstorms did not leave any hope for finding the bodies. However, the horrible fate of Arnolf Lillehammer’s father, Videkon, made it clear this was a much more sinister affair than previously thought.

The bizarre death was extensively covered by local media and police officials devoted great efforts to solving the mystery, but answers were not forthcoming. However, the Lillehammer family finally received some unexpected help: One clear summer day, a man by the name of Bjorn B. (the full name is being withheld) appeared at the family’s door and presented himself as a Swedish army defector.”

[Hat tip: Petra MB]

I suppose it was only a matter of time before age old racist tropes would be updated for the 21st century, still it is depressing to see that a leading Swedish newspaper could print this nauseating rubbish.

Not unsurprisingly that well-known anti-Jewish racist, Gilad Atzmon, has leaped on the bandwagon:

[Linked to a cached copy, not that awful racist site]

“But now the news about Israeli trafficking of human organ is spreading to Western mainstream media. Ynet, the biggest Israeli online newspaper, reported today that “Leading Swedish daily Aftonbladet claimed in one of its articles that IDF soldiers killed Palestinians in order to trade in their organs.”

A few weeks ago we had a debate here on PTT whether Zionism is a colonial apparatus or not. One of the Materialist arguments against the perception of Zionism as a colonial practice was that Palestine has never been too attractive economically; it lacks oil, gold or minerals. However, this may change now. People who specialise in organ theft may find Palestine to be heaven on earth. In the light of the latest vastly spreading accusations, the Jewish national project maybe is colonial after all. “

I wonder if there is any depth to which Atzmon will not plunder? I do hope that his entries on Wikipedia and Citizendium are updated accordingly, but I somehow doubt it.

Update 1: Engage is covering it, and it is possible to make a comment to the editor via this page (corrected link!)

Be aware they delete comments they don’t like, btw what is “freedom of speech” in Swedish?

Update 2: Jonathan Leman has more, in the original Swedish, and via Google’s translator.

Update 3: Politics.ie – The Irish Politics Website covers it too as “IDF kill Palestinians for their organs: Sweden’s Aftonbladet”, thankfully many see through it.

Update 4: European Journalism Centre picked up the story via local.se:

“Sweden’s embassy in Tel Aviv has sharply condemned Sweden’s largest circulation newspaper Aftonbladet for publishing an article accusing the Israeli Defence Forces of harvesting the organs of Palestinians. “The article in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet is as shocking and appalling to us Swedes, as it is to Israeli citizens. We share the dismay expressed by Israeli government representatives, media and the Israeli public. This Embassy cannot but clearly distance itself from it,” writes Ambassador Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier on the Swedish Embassy website. Aftonbladet’s article, ‘Våra söner plundras på sina organ’ (‘They plunder the organs of our sons’), has sparked outrage in Israel. Published on Monday, the article by photographer and writer Donald Boström accuses the Israeli army of involvement in the illegal human organ trade.”

More at local.se.

Update 5: The European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (EISCA) see it as Recycling Old Libels.

Update 6: Scanning the web and blogs via Google the original Aftonbladet story has been picked up by the Far Right, some extremists blogs and even on David Icke’s forums.

Update 7: The author of the piece, Donald Boström says “But whether it’s true or not – I have no idea, I have no clue.” “

There you have it, Boström pushes a racist libel in a national newspaper and he’s not even sure if it is true or not. What a sorry excuse for a journalist he is.

JPost has more:

“A report in Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet earlier this week alleging that Israel was harvesting Palestinians’ organs for transplant continued to cause ripples on Wednesday with statements by Israeli officials, the Swedish Embassy in Tel Aviv and the writer of the report.

“I have a personal opinion, it concerns me that it’s true,” Donald Bostrom, who penned the story, told Israel Radio en route to an emergency meeting at the editorial offices Aftonbladet, presumably to discuss the aftermath of the report.

“I was [present] during the interview that night, I was a witness. It concerns me to the extent that I want it to be investigated,” Bostrom told the station. “But whether it’s true or not – I have no idea, I have no clue.”

He was referring to a Palestinian witness who recounted an incident where a Palestinian was allegedly taken by the Israeli military and his body returned several days later – lacking some internal organs. “

Also at the Jewish Chronicle and the Torygraph.

Update 8: Strangely enough, the Guardian is not covering the story. Ops, stand corrected the Guardian’s search engine didn’t find any articles, but there’s a small AP one here.

Update 9: Norm on it.

Update 10: The comments on Jan Helin’s blog show that such racism is apparently accepted by good few of the posters, hmm. Here’s a translation.

Update 11: At RevLeft they have a thread on the topic, a few posters realize the racist nature of these accusations, but sadly not enough.

Update 12: The other Swedish newspaper, Sydsvenskan, has a Leader’s blog on it.

Update 13: Haaretz on Swedish daily hits back at critics of IDF organ harvest story:

“Helin called it an opinion piece raising questions of Israel in the context of a suspected link to Israel in that U.S. case. He denied any suggestion of anti-Semitism from his paper.

Sweden’s ambassador to Israel issued a press release on Wednesday condemning the article which appeared in Aftonbladet. “

Update 14: The Swedish government is rather maladroit:

The Swedish government on Thursday distanced itself from a statement by its ambassador to Israel, in which she criticized a newspaper article claiming Israel Defense Forces troops killed Palestinian youths and harvested their organs.

“The condemnation was solely the judgment of the embassy [in Tel Aviv], and designed for an Israeli audience,” said a statement released Thursday by the Swedish Foreign Ministry”

Update 15: Carl Bildt seems to lack political common sense and decency:

“Bildt wrote in a blog post late Thursday that he wouldn’t condemn an article in Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet that suggested IDF troops harvested the organs of dead Palestinians. He says freedom of expression is part of the Swedish constitution.

Bildt said the condemnation of anti-Semitism was the only issue on which there has ever been complete unity in the Swedish parliament.”

Elsewhere Bildt says:

“Bildt however expressed understanding for the feelings of the Israeli people over the article penned by photojournalist Donald Bodström in which he alleged that the Israeli Defence Force systematically removed and traded the organs of dead Palestinian men.

“We live in a world where the public debate spills over old boundaries and where we all in various contexts would be wise to be aware of the historical, national and religious sensitivities.” “

I suppose that means that some Swedes can feel smug about themselves, but it does little to convince others that Blood Libels and other racists accusations are covered by blanket approval of “freedom of speech”.

Update 16: Barry Rubin on The blood libel that won’t die.

Update 17: Part of this story has gone global, but not in the original sense. Most of the newer articles concentrate on the Israeli government’s reaction to the absurd and vile accusations, but don’t necessarily debunk or question the validity of the original story.

A recent search of the web reveals that Reuters, Associated press, the Torygraph, a Syrian news agency, PressTV, the Spectator and various Arab news sites have references to Donald Boström and Aftonbladet.

Please bear in mind that the first web sites and blogs to push Boström’s story were on the Extreme Right, either committed purveyors of antisemitism or neo-Nazis and their friends.

Aftonbladet has come in for criticism in Sweden from Sydsvenskan, Local.se and Stockholm News.

There may probably be even more in Swedish language press and media, if you can read it.

So I think it paints a false picture to use Donald Boström’s strange mixture of gullibility and greed against the Swedes, all nine plus million of them.

I doubt the editor of Aftonbladet will ever admit his own error of judgment in running the story, but that is probably more to do with his position as editor and his own lack of character, than anything else, as Robert Nyström puts it:

“Helin then describes how a hateful campaign now has started against the cultural section of Aftonbladet, and mentions that he quickly received 200 hateful emails from all around the world.

He thereby tries to make Aftonbladet into some kind of martyr in the name of press freedom, instead of doing something much more suited: giving the public an apology for the sloppy editorial policy of the paper. This is despicable in its dishonesty and shamefulness. “

Update 18: There’s been a lot of comment on this issue, but this from SO Muffin is surely one of the most succinct and lucid.

“This thread is doing funny things to people. With abject surprise, I have to agree to every single word of Judy. What next?

It is not as if Europe per se was anti-Semitic or if there was a huge tidal wave of anti-Semitism, or even anti-Zionism afoot. Those of us who actually live here (i.e. in Europe) can tell it from our personal experience.

Yet, the Aftonbladet affair is vitally important and it is absolutely vital to react to it and expose it for the toxic smear it is.

Racism (and, folks, anti-Semitism is neither more nor less than plain, stupid racism) is based on racist tropes, from the outright objectionable (oily Greeks, hook-nosed Jews, idle Blacks, stupid Irish, smelly Italians, treacherous Arabs) to the thoroughly, absolutely nasty (Jews slaughtering Gentile children to use their blood, Blacks raping blonde virgins, …). Such tropes are emphatically not some sort of harmless background: they are the major vehicle of desensitization, so that people become inured to racism and willing to break social and personal taboos to advance their hate.

Now, it is of course possible for an individual Jew, like for any other individual, to kill a non-Jew for his-or-her organs. Unlikely, but possible. It is equally possible, say, for a Black to rape a blonde virgin (although statistically it is hugely more likely for a blonde rapist to do so). But, firstly, there is a huge difference between an individual perpetrating this sort of crime and an accusation that it is done collectively: that, say, the Blacks of Chicago, or Jews of Israel are engaged, purposefully and together, in this sort of enterprise (as claimed by Aftonbladet).

Secondly, everybody but a hardened racist will realise the sheer danger in this sort of blank accusation. Hence, everybody but a hardened racist will require hard evidence from reliable sources. The only “evidence” in the Aftonbladet article is that bodies of Palestinians who have been killed in encounters with IDF have been returned to their families “with stitches along their abdomen”. Well, even the author would have known perfectly well that in every organised country (yes, even in Sweden) everybody who has died an unnatural death will be autopsied (in Israel, by the Forensic Medicine Institute in Abu Qabbir, in South Tel Aviv) – and stitches along the abdomen are (as everybody who has viewed any of all these morbid police procedural dramas will know) characteristic of an autopsy. To use this (knowingly!) as the sole source for a canard based on long-standing anti-Semitic trope is a deliberate act of anti-Semitism of the highest order.

And this precisely is why there should be a reaction. Not a violent one, not burning Swedish embassies or boycotting IKEA (founded by a member of the Swedish Nazi Party) or boycotting Swedish academics. Ther should be reaction which is dignified, but resolute. Until the Swedish elites recognise the sort of racist viper that they have nourished at their bosom.”

Update 19: Read J.J.Goldberg’s The Swedish Press Exposes the Invasion of the Jewish Body-snatchers.

Update 20: Aftonbladet are pushing this racist nonsense for the second time with an article that appeared in the Sunday edition by Oisín Cantwell and Urban Andersson.

Update 21: Seth Freeman has a truly awful post on CiF, Israel cries wolf over ‘blood libel’.

“that questions White’s accuracy in the use of supporting material and to a response by Ben White that seeks to rebut Hoffman’s claims. As before, publication on the JfJfP website does not imply support for arguments made; they are published as a contribution to debate.”

“the JfJfP website does not imply support for arguments made;…”

It is hard to tell if they are apologizing for including in a critique of White’s work, or that they wish to, partly, distance themselves from White’s book, just in case, it blows up in their face.

Which seems to me to be a political answer.

By that I mean, it is the type of answer that you would get from a professional politician, a form of words which don’t really address the issue, but are often thrown out as a way of placating criticism and hedging one’s bets just in case it all goes wrong.

Astute readers will see that JfJfP leave out Jonathan Hoffman’s final reply to White’s rejoiner, which is posted at the top of Z blog.

Not very impressive either way, as they don’t deal with White’s use of doctored quotes, nor the substance of the criticism which has been leveled at White’s methodology.

According to the article in the Jewish Chronicle one of the reasons given was “safety”.

The implication being that if the Trade Union Friends of Israel had a stall at the Unison conference that it might be attacked or the people manning it might be threatened.

That seems possible in the current climate but consider the precedence.

In spite of the abundance of news concerning Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan in the 1980s, I don’t believe there was any question that anyone from the Trade Union Friends of the Soviet Union (or the equivalent) would have been attacked by other trade unionists, should they attend a conference.

Still less would be Trade Union friends of Russia be likely for physical attack in spite of Russia’s brutal and murderous campaign against the Chechens.

I have yet to hear of any Trade Union friends of China being accosted or threatened despite China’s military conquest of Tibet and subsequent occupation.

Readers could probably pick other examples, but I am sure that you see the implication?

Despite other regimes with terrible, utterly horrific human rights records there was never any question that their “Trade Union friends” or whatever the fraternal organisations were actually called being physically threatened, and certainly not by trade unionists.

That isn’t how trade unionist conduct arguments, fascists certainly attack trade unions but trade unionists do not emulate those modern barbaric regimes and why would they?

Fraternal discussion between Israeli and Palestinian trade unions has benefited both of them, it has lessened tensions and people relate to each other.

So Unison’s decision sets a terrible precedence, which is that the threat or implied threat of violence is somehow acceptable against trade unionists, who consider themselves to be friends of the Israelis.

Even if you disagree with the Trade Union Friends of Israel, that should worry any genuine and concerned trade unionist, for once you start down the road of violence (or implied violence) within the trade union movement then you are doing the fascist’s job for them.

Update: Engage has news of a fringe meeting. I hadn’t realized but there’s history here.