British Doctors Accuse Israel of “Medical Torture”


 

By Stephen Lendman

 

Seventy-one UK doctors along with 343 academics want the Israeli Medical Association and its members expelled from the World Medical Association. They want joint projects with Israeli universities banned. They accused Israeli doctors of “medical torture” on Palestinian patients.

Thousands of Palestinians are imprisoned solely for political reasons. Vital medical care when needed is routinely denied or inadequately provided, pain meds substituting for treatment, causing needless suffering, at times resulting in death.

In 2000, former Israeli Abu Kabir forensic institute head Dr. Yehuda Hiss accused Israel of killing Palestinians to harvest their organs. Interviewed on Israel’s Channel 2 at the time, he said “(w)e started to harvest corneas. (What) was done was (unethical). No permission was asked from…famil(ies)” of victims.

British Doctors AccuseThe 1990s-aired Channel 2 report said Abu Kabir forensic specialists harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from bodies of Israeli soldiers, its citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers – without obtaining legal authorization.

UC Berkeley Professor of Medical Anthropology/Organ Watch founder Nancy Scheper-Hughes earlier said “Israeli organ harvesting – sometimes with Israeli governmental funding and the participation of high Israeli officials, prominent Israeli physicians, and Israeli ministries – has been documented for many years. Among the victims have been Palestinians.”

“Israel is at the top” of the organ harvesting racket. “It has tentacles reaching out worldwide…a pyramid system at work that’s awesome.” “They have brokers everywhere, bank accounts everywhere; they’ve got recruiters, they’ve got translators, they’ve got travel agents who set up the visas.”

“They pay “the poor and the hungry to slowly dismantle their bodies” or simply take what they want from fresh corpses.” “Body parts are commodities, to be harvested and sold to the rich, even though organ sales are prohibited in most countries, but not (under) international law.”

The UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime calls organ extraction for profit human exploitation. In 2008, Israel banned the practice. It still persists.

Earlier, former Council of Europe Human Dignity and Equality director Marja Ruotanen said: “We have legislation and definitions covering the trafficking in human beings for the purpose of organ removal, (yet) there is a legal vacuum for the traffic in organs, tissues and cells.”

Organs from perhaps thousands of Palestinian corpses were harvested, Abu Kabir forensic specialists are complicit with Israeli authorities in trafficking in human body parts. Israeli physicians involved in medically illegal and unethical practices, along with state authorities permitting it, should be held fully accountable for their crimes.

Separately, recently the Palestinian Detainees Committee (PDC) said Israel abducted and detained 130 Palestinians in 2015 for legitimate social media comments. Over two dozen face wrongful charges of “incitement and supporting terrorist groups.” Others are administratively detained uncharged and untried – indefinitely if Israel chooses.

PDC said: “(s)uch arrests and violations are carried out while Israel continues to ignore racist Israeli social media posts, photos and statements by extremists who openly call for killing the Arabs, for executing them and for removing them out of their homeland.”

Anyone legitimately criticizing Israeli viciousness or expressing solidarity with Palestinian resistance for justice risks arrest, prosecution, imprisonment or assassination.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.




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