2009 Aftonbladet Israel controversy - Wikipedia

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2009 Aftonbladet Israel controversy

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Controversy over report of organ harvesting by Israeli troops

Former headquarters of Aftonbladet, the largest Swedish tabloid.<br>On 17 August 2009, the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published an article reporting how Israel stole the organs of Palestinians in custody. Before eventually admitting to theft of organs, the Israeli government initially denied the allegations and called them anti-Semitic. The Swedish government refused to condemn the article, and upheld Aftonbladet's freedom of speech, leading to a rift between the Swedish and the Israeli governments.[1][2] Palestinian officials and families of the deceased called for an independent investigation. In December 2009, Israeli officials admitted that they had harvested the organs of Palestinians without their families' permission.[3] These Palestinians had been killed by the Israeli military, but Israeli officials emphasized they did not kill Palestinians in order to harvest their organs.[4]

The article that sparked the controversy was written by Swedish freelance[2] photojournalist Donald Boström, with the title Våra söner plundras på sina organ ("Our sons are being plundered for their organs"). It presented allegations that in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, many young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by Israeli forces and their bodies returned to their families with organs missing. It was published by Aftonbladet, one of the largest daily newspapers in the Nordic countries.

The Israeli government and several US representatives[5][6] claimed that the article was baseless and incendiary, alluding to the history of antisemitism and blood libels against Jews, and asked the Swedish government to denounce the article. The government refused, citing freedom of the press and the Swedish constitution. Swedish ambassador to Israel Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier condemned the article as "shocking and appalling" and stated that freedom of the press carries responsibility, but the Swedish government distanced itself from her remarks.[7] The Swedish Newspaper Publishers' Association and Reporters Without Borders supported Sweden's refusal to condemn it. The former warned of venturing onto a slope with government officials damning occurrences in Swedish media, which may curb warranted debate and restrain freedom of expression by self-censorship.[8] Italy made a stillborn attempt to defuse the diplomatic situation by a European resolution condemning antisemitism.[9] A survey among the cultural editors of the other major Swedish newspapers found that all would have refused the article.[10] The Palestinian National Authority announced that it would establish a commission to investigate the article's claims.[11][12]

In December 2009, a 2000 interview with the chief pathologist at the L. Greenberg National Institute of Forensic Medicine Yehuda Hiss was released in which he had admitted taking organs from the corpses of Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers without their families' permission. Israeli health officials confirmed Hiss's confession but stated that such incidents had ended in the 1990s and noted that Hiss had been removed from his post.[13][14][15] The Palestinian press said the report "appeared to confirm Palestinians' allegations that Israel returned their relatives' bodies with their chests sewn up, having harvested their organs".[16] Several news agencies claimed the Aftonbladet article accused Israel of killing Palestinians to harvest their organs,[17] although the author, the culture editor for Aftonbladet, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes denied that it had made that claim.[18]

Article

In August 2009, Aftonbladet ran an article by freelance writer Donald Boström in its culture section. The article opened by mentioning arrests related to a suspected money-laundering and organ-trafficking operation involving rabbis, politicians and civil servants in New Jersey and New York. Briefly introducing the problem of the illegal organ trade worldwide, Boström then related that he heard and saw things during his stay in the Palestinian territories in 1992, during the First Intifada.[19]

A photograph accompanying the article depicted a cadaver with a line of stitches on the torso, identified as that of Bilal Ghanem, who was 19 when he was killed by IDF soldiers on 13 May 1992.[20] The Ghanem family was not interviewed for his article, but Boström described his impressions of Ghanem's burial, which he attended:

Together with the sharp noises from the shovels we could hear occasional 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 and suddenly...