Why Is ‘Israel’ Withholding the Bodies of Hundreds of Palestinians?

Murad Jandali | 2 years ago

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As part of a non-stop terror campaign against the Palestinian people and a grave violation of human rights, the Palestinian authorities accused the Israeli Occupation of conducting experiments on the bodies of the Palestinian martyrs it was holding.

It announced that it was in the process of internationalizing the issue of holding the bodies of Palestinians to demand international human rights institutions conduct an investigation into their conditions.

The Israeli Occupation has hidden the remains of hundreds of Palestinians since 1967, withholding them in mortuaries or burying them in inappropriate cemeteries in what is known as the cemetery of numbers.

It is noteworthy that this Israeli practice contradicts international law, as the Geneva Convention stipulates that parties to an armed conflict must honor each other's burial, which made Tel Aviv open to widespread criticism by human rights defenders.

 

Withholding Bodies

"The bodies of Palestinian martyrs held by the occupation are used in medical laboratories in Israeli universities," according to an accusation made by Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh on July 04, 2022.

Shtayyeh said in a speech during the weekly government meeting in Ramallah: "The terrorism of the Occupation does not stop committing crimes against our people. The number of martyrs who have been shot by the Occupation since the beginning of this year has reached 78, including 15 minors."

He added, "When the bodies of Palestinian martyrs are being taken away, the Occupation is increasing the pain of the families. Using the bodies of martyrs in Israeli university labs is a flagrant violation of human rights, values, principles, and scientific ethics."

Shtayyeh called on international universities to boycott the Israeli universities involved in seizing the bodies.

He called for pressure on the Israeli government to stop violating the bodies of the martyrs and to release all the bodies it is holding immediately so that their families can bid them farewell in a manner that benefits them and respects their feelings.

Shtayyeh's statements about the use of the bodies of Palestinian martyrs inside Israeli medical laboratories sparked a wave of public anger toward the Israeli Occupation.

However, these statements are not a product of the moment or recent. There were previous statements by Israeli officials in which they confirmed the theft of organs and tissues from the bodies of Palestinian martyrs.

In turn, Hussein Shujaiya, coordinator of the national campaign to retrieve the bodies of the martyrs, said that "the Israeli occupation has been holding the bodies of 104 Palestinian martyrs in refrigerators since 2015."

He added, "In addition, the Israeli authorities have been holding the bodies of 256 martyrs in private cemeteries for many years, including nine children and three women, and eight prisoners who died in its prisons.

Cemeteries of Numbers are secret cemeteries located in closed military areas subject to the Israeli Ministry of Defense. It is called like that because the names of the martyrs written on the tombstones are replaced by a number written on a metal plate. This makes the cemeteries vulnerable to being swept away by the torrent and the bodies vulnerable to being eaten by wild beasts.

 

Bargaining Chips

The bodies were often used for the purpose of pressure, extortion, and bargaining as part of a policy pursued by the Israeli Occupation for many years.

Hundreds of bodies were seized, some of which were released as part of exchange deals with Arab and Palestinian factions, while others were released through political negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Occupation or as a result of legal efforts undertaken by human rights organizations.

On the other hand, many believe that holding the bodies is an additional punitive means of the collective punishment used by the Occupation against the Palestinians, while the families of the martyrs usually organize vigils to demand the release of the bodies of their sons.

"Israel" had begun to adopt a policy of detaining the bodies in 1948 and using it as a means to blackmail the families of the martyrs. This policy was discontinued in 2008 but returned to use in 2015 by a government decision.

In 2017, the court briefly ruled the policy illegal before overturning the decision again.

In September 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court issued a decision allowing the Israeli military commander to detain the bodies of Palestinian martyrs and bury them temporarily for the purpose of using them as future bargaining chips.

In February 2020, then-Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett issued a decision to collect the bodies of Palestinian martyrs to barter in future prisoner exchange deals, which prompted Israeli analysts to question whether collecting the bodies was actually a bargaining chip or to fill the acute shortage of organs for transplantation into Israeli bodies?

On his part, Palestinian journalist Iyad Hamad explained in a statement to Al-Estiklal that "withholding the bodies of Palestinian martyrs is a policy that the Israeli authorities have followed since 1967."

He added, "At that time, the occupation established the Cemeteries of Numbers, with the aim of exploiting the bodies of the Palestinians and using them as bargaining chips with the Palestinian resistance, which actually happened during an exchange process that took place between the occupation and the Lebanese Hezbollah."

He continued, "In addition, this dirty Israeli practice is a means of collective punishment for the families of the martyrs, who have become aware that the body will be stolen and sold to Israeli universities and institutes for experiments."

Mr. Hamad pointed out that "the Israeli occupation's transgressions and crimes against the Palestinians are innumerable," stressing that "the most important of all, what is the role of the Palestinian Authority in such an issue in the wake of US President Joe Biden's visit to the West Bank? Does Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas intend to open the issue of withholding bodies and stealing their organs?"

 

Harvesting Martyrs' Organs

In her book published in 2008, the Israeli Professor, Meira Weiss, said that she visited the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute near Tel Aviv between 1996-2002 and revealed information about the theft of organs from the bodies of Palestinian martyrs to be transplanted into the bodies of Jewish patients, in addition to their use in medical faculties in Israeli universities to conduct research on them, without the knowledge of their families.

Dr. Weiss stated that "the first intifada period in 1987 witnessed the largest organ theft, especially with the increase in the number of Palestinian martyrs' bodies," noting that "the institute's workers received a military order to dissect those bodies and steal their organs, without the knowledge of the martyrs' families."

"Staff at the Forensic Institute are stealing the organs of Palestinian young men and immediately implanting them in the bodies of Israeli soldiers to save their lives. The army pays the full costs of the surgeries," she said.

The Israeli Professor's book on the theft of Palestinian organs confirmed the testimony of the martyrs' families and the validity of their complaints when they complained about the theft of organs from their children's bodies after receiving them from the Israeli side.

Meanwhile, other Palestinians believed that the Occupation stole the organs of the bodies of their martyrs that were hidden from it and then buried them in the Cemeteries of Numbers to hide the traces of the crime, amid real fears that more organs would be stolen from other martyrs whose bodies are still being held by the Occupation.

In a related context, the Swedish newspaper, Aftonbladet, raised again in its issue dated August 19, 2009, the issue of the theft of the organs of the bodies of Palestinian martyrs.

The newspaper also accused the Israeli occupation forces of killing Palestinian citizens with the aim of stealing their internal organs, using them illegally, and trading them within an international network, stressing that the Israeli Occupation is the only country that holds the bodies of the martyrs in the so-called Cemeteries of Numbers.

The Swedish newspaper's report at that time sparked a diplomatic crisis, especially after the Swedish Prime Minister at the time, Fredrik Reinfeldt, refused to apologize for what was stated in the report, while "Israel" denied these allegations and described them as anti-Semitic.

However, a journalistic investigation published by CNN in early September 2009 confirmed that the Occupation had stolen organs from the bodies of the Palestinian martyrs it was holding and revealed new data indicating that Tel Aviv is the largest international center for illegal human organ trade.

On December 23, 2009, there was a public acknowledgment by an Israeli official that organ theft was indeed taking place, but the Israeli Ministry of Health said it was a practice that occurred in the 1990s and earlier and is no longer happening now.

The Israeli recognition at that time came as a result of an investigation broadcast by the Israeli Channel 2 on December 19, 2009, which revealed that the Israeli Forensic Institute had stolen organs from the bodies of Palestinian martyrs held by the Israeli authorities during the nineties.

The investigation included an interview conducted in 2000 in which Dr. Yehuda Hiss, former head of the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute, admitted that human organs, tissues, skin, and bones were taken from the bodies of Palestinian martyrs without the knowledge or consent of their relatives.

Dr. Hiss was fired in 2004 for organ irregularities, but charges were later dropped, and he was the institute's chief pathologist when the investigation was made public.

The investigation also revealed at the time that the Occupation owns a skin bank considered one of the largest in the world, while the Israelis do not donate their organs, which raised a question prepared for the investigation about the source of this skin, confirming that there is an Israeli theft of skin from the bodies of Palestinian martyrs.

Yediot Aharonot newspaper was the first to uncover the illegal trafficking of human organs by Dr. Yehuda Hiss when it published in the year 2000 a press report in which it stated that Dr. Hiss had practiced selling human organs and had price lists specified for each organ, noting that he was selling organs to Israeli universities and medical institutes.