The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) has claimed that news reports are confirming the “theft” of human organs from dead Palestinians. According to the MPAC report:
Today, several prominent news outlets confirmed what the Israeli government initially denied and denounced as anti-Semitic — that Israeli doctors had extracted human organs from dead Palestinians during the 1988 intifada and into the 1990s. MPAC today called on the U.S. government to condemn this atrocity, which must be investigated as a war crime. The perpetrators of this injustice must be brought to the Hague for prosecution under international law….”That the Israeli government would accuse those who exposed this immoral, illegal and appalling crime of anti-Semitism is evidence of what happens to anyone who dares to criticize any of its actions,” said MPAC Senior Advisor Dr. Maher Hathout. “This tyranny of intimidation is stifling any healthy debate within our society, particularly between American Jews and Muslims.”…What is missing in today’s media reporting is the voice of the Palestinian families who issued the grievances in the first place. After their relatives where killed by Israeli soldiers, the families believed the deceased were taken for autopsies. However, they were returned several days later with noticeable abdominal cavities, stitching of the ventral side of the body, and missing teeth. When they questioned Israeli authorities, they were told that the bodies were investigated on the causes of their unnatural deaths.
However, the media reports cited do not confirm the Swedish news story that was the source of the original controversy. As the British Guardian newspaper explains:
The story emerged in an interview with Dr Yehuda Hiss, former head of the Abu Kabir forensic institute near Tel Aviv. The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic who released it because of the row between Israel and Sweden over a report in the Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet. Channel 2 TV reported that in the 1990s, specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives. The Israeli military confirmed to the programme that the practice took place, but added: “This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer.” Hiss said: “We started to harvest corneas … whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family.” However, there was no evidence that Israel had killed Palestinians to take their organs, as the Swedish paper reported. Aftonbladet quoted Palestinians as saying young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by the Israeli forces and their bodies returned to their families with missing organs.
MPAC was established in the mid-1980’s by individuals whose backgrounds are likely rooted in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Since its inception, MPAC has acted in concert with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. Although proclaiming a love for the Jewish people and engaging in interfaith dialog, MPAC has made frequent anti-Semitic statements that assert or imply an organized Jewish campaign to defame and exclude U.S. Muslims. MPAC has also gone beyond criticism of Israel, engaging in demonization of the Jewish state. Such demonization includes accusations of “rape of the Palestinians” in regard to the Al-Aqsa mosque, comparisons with Nazis, accusation of apartheid and genocide, accusations of “butchery”, and suggestions that Israel is seeking the eradication of Islam from its territories.