Immediately following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Israel flew an incredible amount of doctors and equipment there (more so than any other country, proportionately speaking)—some of the best and most advanced technology—and made an incredible difference in the aftermath.

While most critics of Israel at least acknowledged the humanitarianism and generosity of the country, there are still some despicably evil, black-hearted people so full of hatred that they cannot even recognize an altruistic action for what it is, and instead look for ways to slander and malign what every sane person agrees is an outright kindness.

For one of the most disgusting examples of this, here is a transcript of a couple of verminous bottom-feeders on Syrian TV actually spinning Israel’s benevolence into some sort of conspiracy to harvest organs for trafficking. All I can say is: may these sick, twisted maniacs wake up one day in an alley somewhere missing a kidney (or worse) and know what real organ harvesting is.

The transcript is from MEMRITV.org, and the actual video can be viewed at this link.

The following are excerpts from a televised debate on the so-called Israeli trafficking in human organs, which aired on Syrian TV on January 27, 2010.

Reporter: Israel is aiding the people stricken by the Haiti earthquake. This is a wonder unto itself. But the real reason is to steal organs from the corpses of the Haitian dead, in the greatest catastrophe this poor country has ever witnessed. Once the reason is known, there is no need to wonder – the Israeli delegation, which came to Haiti under the pretext of helping these fate-stricken people, exploited the tragedy and the suffering of the Haitians, by stealing their human organs for trafficking.

This was confirmed by American activist T. West, who documented this heinous crime and posted the film on Youtube. The film shows Israelis engaged in stealing organs from the earthquake victims. It seems that the [Israeli] entity of killing, destruction, and terrorism, which has become skilled in killing women and children in ice-cold blood, is now expert in stealing human organs and trafficking in them.

For years, human organ trafficking has been on the rise in Israel. The work of the traffickers has become an international trade, with offices in Europe and Africa. This has brought Israel to the third place in the world in organ trafficking.

Swedish journalist Donald Boström, who visited the occupied territories, confirmed, in a report published by the Swedish paper Aftonbladet, that the occupation soldiers were kidnapping Palestinian youth in the West Bank and Gaza, and were returning them to their families as stiff corpses, after having ripped out their organs. In addition, the Israeli authorities force Palestinians sentenced to death to sign documents consenting to organ donation after they are hanged.

The Swedish report linked these acts to the Jewish network that was caught last July in the American city of New Jersey, and to the rabbis who were accused of trafficking in human organs, in Israel and other countries.

[...]

Moderator: Dr. Jassem, the question poses itself.

Dr. Jassem Zakariya, Professor of International Relations, Damascus University: Of course, when we watch the scenes in this fine report, Shakespeare immediately comes to mind…

Moderator: Shylock…

Dr. Jassem Zakariya: Shylock, yes. As we see, the Jew has not changed – especially the Zionist Jews, who are now gathered in the so-called “Israel,” which is the largest concentration in history of war criminals, who committed crimes against humanity. This is how they will be remembered if they continue with this.

Of course, the fact that the tragedy of the Haitian people benefits them is undoubtedly evidence of the imminent end of this entity, because this is the ultimate crime.

They began with our folks in Palestine – with the prisoners, the wounded, and the martyrs. They began with terrible crimes, through which they established their entity. To this day, they persist with their crimes, while the loathsome image of the Jew, the Zionist, the alien who came as an invader, an occupier, makes another appearance – this time in Haiti, not Palestine – so the whole world – anyone with a heart, ears, eyes, and insight – can realize that these people are the enemies of all mankind, not just of the Palestinians, the Arabs, and the Muslims.

This is a very important matter. At the very time that we are witnessing the dignity, courage, and humanity of the besieged people of Gaza, who make donations to Haiti… This is civilization, this is Arab identity, this is history, while these [Israelis] are just a bunch of murderers and criminals. They have never been anything else, and therefore, they will pay the price, sooner or later.

Moderator: Dr. Mustafa, is Israel really in need of these organs, or does it reflect their total disdain for the human soul? Before the show, you mentioned something about Abu Ghreib, and I told you to keep it for the show.

Dr. Muhammad Mustafa Al-Habash, Department of Transplantation, Al-Mouassat University Hospital: Israel is a country devoid of moral values and principles. When it takes human organs from various places worldwide… I have read many reports, over many years, about how they took organs from Croatia. I recently read on the Internet that an American activist claimed that Israel had taken organs from prisoners in Abu Ghreib in Iraq.

In the face of such a thing, I say: “How can Israeli doctors act this way?” After all, they are part of this system. Medicine is like music. It is a universal language of ethics…

Moderator: It does not officially prohibit the stealing of human organs…

Dr. Muhammad Mustafa Al-Habash: That’s true. Israel is not deterred by this abomination.

The Swedish Blood Libel story continues…

Now, Arutz 7 is reporting that an Israeli activist is suing the newspaper, Aftonbladet, for $7.5 million in a NY-based lawsuit. The activist, Guy Ophir, chose the venue because “the writer of the allegations published in Aftonbladet referred to rabbis who reside in New York and were charged with being involved in the alleged sale of organs. The Swedish paper also is distributed in New York.”

Arutz 7 also gives a little background on Ophir:

Attorney Guy Ophir, who previously has filed suits in Israel against violators of non-smoking laws, said that the tabloid’s allegations were anti-Semitic and in effect were a “racist blood libel” against Jews and Israeli soldiers…

Ophir previously has won a 2007 lawsuit that ended with a court ruling that owners of restaurants and other public stores must prevent workers and customers from smoking while frequenting their establishments.

The court ruled that a Tel Aviv restaurant pay Ophir NIS 3,000 shekels ($750) for damages plus legal costs after he was exposed to smoke in the restaurant.

There seem to be developments in the Swedish Blood Libel story almost every day. I originally posted about it a couple of weeks ago here (and updated that twice), then posted another new development yesterday here.

The latest news now is that the newspaper Aftonbladet has been officially reported to the Swedish Chancellor of Justice Goran Lambertz, who is the only prosecutor with the power to take legal action in cases concerning freedom of speech and the press. The written request asks the Chancellor to consider whether the article constitutes racial agitation, which in Sweden is defined as a crime involving the public dissemination of statements which threaten or express contempt for one or more identified ethnic groups.

Sweden’s The Local reports on this news and the Aftonbladet‘s response to it:

“Is that true? I am perplexed,” Åsa Linderborg, Aftonbladet’s culture editor, said after being informed by the The Local of the report on Tuesday.

“I think it is a shame that whenever solidarity is shown for the Palestinians and criticism is directed again Israel, someone cries anti-Semitism.”

“One has to have the right to ask questions”…

First of all, there is a world of a difference between “asking questions” and publishing a two-page spread accusing a country of systematic organ trafficking as a matter of government policy, covert or otherwise.

More importantly, the fact that the article in question took advantage of the recent story of an American rabbi indicted for selling a kidney as some sort of “proof” of the Palestinian claims belies her supposed innocent intentions. After all, if she is just directing this against “Israel” and not necessarily “Jews”, then what does an American rabbi have to do with the IDF?  That obviously would provide no proof or relevance at all… unless she is playing the Jewish card.

Her shameless lies are so transparent, and it’s really sickening that the state of anti-Semitism in the world today is actually so bad that she knows she can tell bald-faced lies like that and fully expect to be believed by most people because she knows that she’ll get that wink-and-a-smile from them.

To paraphrase a popular slogan: anti-Zionism is racism.

This is perfect proof of that: someone hiding behind the old “anti-Israel, not anti-Semite” line, while pulling in American rabbis, basing entire stories on the hearsay of notoriously untrustworthy Palestinians, etc.

Nils Funcke, one of Sweden’s leading experts on legislation pertaining to freedom of speech, said he expected the Chancellor of Justice to reject the case.

“The article can hardly be construed as racial agitation. There is no ethnic group targeted; the article focuses on the Israeli army, and Israel is not made up solely of Jews,” Funcke told The Local.

Even had the article concentrated on a single ethnic group, Funcke did not believe it would be considered “agitation” under the law.

“It was more a description of events and certainly did not agitate against a particular group.”

How can it be called a “description of events” when none of it was substantiated and it was all based on hearsay and conjecture on the part of the newspapers employees themselves?

That would be like me saying “every black (or non-Scandinavian) girl in Sweden is systematically raped by a covert agency of the Swedish government at least once before her 8th birthday“… and then calling it a “description of events” just because I thought it was a good, provocative story that would “raise questions”, even though all of the “events” are unfounded and made up. Same thing.

As popular Israeli journalist Ayala Hasson told Army Radio, reported by Arutz 7: “Freedom of the press means that one may comment as one sees fit – but it does not give license to report made-up ‘facts.’”

In another crazy development, the Jerusalem Post has interviewed the very family mentioned in the Aftonbladet article, and they themselves dubiously contradict the assertive statements attributed to them in the original article!

His mother, Sadeeka, said he was shot by an IDF sniper as he walked out of his home. “The bullets hit him directly in the heart,” she said.

Ghanem’s younger brother, Jalal, said he could not confirm the allegations made by the Swedish newspaper that his brother’s organs had been stolen.

“I don’t know if this is true,” he said. “We don’t have any evidence to support this.”

…The mother denied that she had told any foreign journalist that her son’s organs had been stolen…

Jalal said that he and other villagers recall that a Swedish photographer was in the village during the funeral and that he managed to take a number of pictures of the body before the funeral. “That was the only time we saw this photographer,” he recounted.

Ibrahim Ghanem, a relative of Bilal, said that the family never told the Swedish photographer that Israel had stolen organs from the dead man’s body.

“Maybe the journalist reached that conclusion on the basis of the stitches he saw on the body,” he said. “But as far as the family is concerned, we don’t know if organs were removed from the body because we never performed our own autopsy. All we know is that Bilal’s teeth were missing.”

Interestingly, The Local writes about the Aftonbladet’s response to this development as follows:

Åsa Linderborg told The Local on Tuesday that Donald Boström is responsible for his own sources but added that staff from Aftonbladet had met the family concerned over the weekend and, she claims, had gained confirmation of the allegations.

So, now, obviously someone is lying. Either the Swedish newspaper or the Palestinian family. Despite the abundant anti-Semitism in Sweden, it still gets trumped by the even-more robust Palestinian history of bald-faced lies. So, if I had to pick out the liar, I’d bet on the Palestinian family.

One last issue I want to address: I’ve seen many blogs and commentators reference the Mohammed cartoons in Sweden’s recent journalistic history as a comparison, as in: “the Swedish government bent over backwards to accommodate Muslims during the cartoon controversy, so why do they keep toeing the ‘we-don’t-get-involved-in-matters-of-the-press’ line now?”

For example, The Local describes the Swedish government response now as:

In response to pressure from the Israeli government to condemn the newspaper Sweden’s prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, and foreign minister Carl Bildt, have emphasized that it is not the government’s role to comment on the content of newspapers.

I’ll withhold judgment of the Swedish government’s response until after Lambertz’s inquiry. But, until then, I have to say that, granted, Reinfeldt did ultimately go a bit further in setting up meetings with Muslim leaders to calm them down, but even then he still stressed the same sentiments he is stressing now, as reported at the time by the AFP:

Sweden’s prime minister and envoys from 22 Muslim nations held talks Friday that both sides termed as constructive to defuse a row over a newspaper cartoon depicting Prophet Mohammed as a dog…

Reinfeldt said the talks were “a dialogue” between both sides, but warned it was too early to tell whether Muslim anger had been quelled.

“I told them Sweden is an open country and an open society. Muslims and Christians live side by side in mutual understanding for each other and we care very much for this model of living,” he said.

“I described the Swedish constitution, which does not permit politicians to interfere with how the media (works) and what it chooses to publish,” he said.

So, I wouldn’t be too quick to reference the Mohammed cartoon controversy as evidence of any major Swedish government departure from their normal policies.

However, there are other reasons for criticizing the Swedish government. Namely, the fact that the Swedish government actually funded these allegations! As Arutz 7 reports:

Antagonism between Israel and Sweden over Swedish media accusation that IDF soldiers sold Arab body parts is heating up, in light of evidence that Sweden’s government funded the “research” for the story. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is expected to demand a Swedish government condemnation of the accusations.

News of the funding was broken Sunday morning by Maariv/NRG. Maariv’s correspondent in Sweden, Liran Lotker, reports that most of the material in last week’s controversial article is old, having appeared in a book written in 2001 by the author of the article. The book, entitled Inshallah, was funded by various bodies, including the Foreign Ministry of Sweden, Swedish labor unions, and some organizations based in the Palestinian Authority-controlled areas.

So, skip the cartoon comparisons and focus on the other apparent hypocrisy here, where the Swedish government claims “hands-off policy” with regard to this story, yet their own Foreign Ministry put up some of the money to plant the seeds for these rumors 8 years ago.

I recently posted regarding Sweden’s new twist on the old blood libel, where the top Swedish newspaper, the left-leaning Aftonbladet, has published a two-page spread, headlined “They Plunder The Organs Of Our Sons”, accusing Israeli soldiers of kidnapping Palestinians to harvest their organs, and then returning their dead bodies to the families with the organs missing. This understandably caused quite a ruckus in Israel and, after some prodding, elicited a sharp rebuke of the story by the Swedish government.

It looks, though, like this new libel is only just getting started. According to YNet, that same newspaper, Aftonbladet, has now published an entirely new story, this time by different authors, making the same accusations against Israel (based on the same hearsay fabrications by those pathological liars, the Palestinians).

After the first slap in the face, Israel was pretty diplomatic about it: firm, but apparently calm. This time, it looks like they’re finally getting visibly upset in their response—and rightly so. Here is part of the YNet report:

The Israeli government declared Sunday morning that it expects the Swedish government to officially condemn the first Aftonbladet report.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We do not want the Swedish government to apologize, we want it to issue a condemnation.”

On Thursday Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman slammed the Swedish Foreign Ministry for saying that Swedish Ambassador to Israel Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier’s condemnation of the report does not represent the Swedish government’s stance.

“It’s a shame that the Swedish Foreign Ministry fails to intervene in a case of blood libels against Jews. This is reminiscent of Sweden’s stand during World War II, when had failed to intervene as well,” Lieberman said.

The Rubin Report has a great write-up of this ongoing incident here, discussing the blurring boundaries between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism (which is increasingly often just a flimsy mask for anti-Semitism). Here’s an excerpt of some choice paragraphs:

What does this incident tell us? One thing is that there is no limit to the insanity of how Israel is treated nowadays in so many supposedly responsible, left-wing, and intellectual circles.

It also tells us that anyone of decency and good intentions should start re-examining right now their credulity in accepting anti-Israel slanders, nonsensical media or academic claims, or irresponsibly inaccurate “human rights” group reports…

The time has come to realize that antisemitism, anti-Zionism, absurd misrepresentation of Israel and the effort to wipe it off the map are all tightly intertwined.

We have seen the rise of a systematic industry in wild anti-Israel claims by Palestinians which are repeated without evidence by the Western news media and others…

The recipe is simple: Palestinians make up charges, tell them to sympathetic reporters or academics or “human rights’” officials who don’t demand evidence, and then are widely spread through other willing executioners of truth whose low degree of professionalism and high level of politicization make them conducive to becoming collaborators in the enterprise.

Before Israeli officials can investigate and present a detailed response–largely ignored by the media–they are all off to the next lurid accusation.

The fact that none of these accusations is ever ultimately proven correct seems to have no effect on the industry.

One additional point that Rubin Report raises that is very interesting is regarding the  defense of free speech that the Swedish ambassador originally choice to highlight in his partial apology. The Rubin Report points out that:

What is provoking outrage in Sweden is not the article itself but the statement of Sweden’s ambassador in Israel who expressed a partial apology, while defending free speech in Sweden. Where were all these people during the Danish cartoon controversy when Sweden’s government went far out of its way to grovel and even try to repress those who published the cartoons?

I recently posted regarding Sweden’s new twist on the old blood libel. Apparently, Sweden is not the only one having problems with insane journalists. Haaretz recently reported that a journalist interviewed Holland’s largest daily, De Telegraf, has said that a recent outbreak of flu pandemics, such as the bird flu, caused by the virus H5N1, was part of an international Jewish conspiracy to reduce the world’s population, similar to other pandemics.

In the newspaper, these particular Jews are described as ”praying to another god; Lucifer, Satan, or however you want to call him” and “are called Rockefeller, Rothschild, Brezinski and Kissinger.”

The irony is that two of the four names are not even Jewish (Rockefeller and Brezinski). You’d think that might give pause to those tasked with fact-checking at the paper. But, that might be asking too much.

Blood libels against the Jews have been around for almost as long as Jews have been around. They take various forms, but typically are one variation or another of the fabrication where Jews supposedly take the blood of Gentiles to use for baking matzah (which somehow still stays white).

A Swedish journalist has recently given a whole new twist to this disgusting lie. Haaretz is reporting that the top Swedish newspaper, the left-leaning Aftonbladet, has published a two-page spread, headlined “They Plunder The Organs Of Our Sons”, accusing Israeli soldiers of kidnapping Palestinians to harvest their organs, and then returning their dead bodies to the families with the organs missing.

The article relies entirely on tall tales spun by Palestinians. That the journalist, the editor, the ombudsman, and everyone else involved in publishing that filthy drivel didn’t stop to think that maybe some better evidence should be called for, considering:

1. most Palestinians have an ax to grind with the IDF;
2. the track record of Palestinian accusations have proven most of them to be liars, slanderers, hypocrites and revisionists of the highest degree (think: Jenin “massacre”, or the Rafah crossing deception, or their Holocaust denial, or their doublespeak between English and Arabic broadcasts, or… I could go on and on);
3. they are hurling accusations at a national army, not some individual, which obviously can cause serious diplomatic issues; and
4. the country in question is Israel, which is for obvious reasons quite sensitive about blood libels and would not take such repulsive attacks lightly.

One can only hope that the blowback for this huge error in judgment will be monumental and global to the extent that it will set an example for any future libel attempts. (Like I said, one can hope…)

UPDATE:
There is more description of the original article provided by Arutz 7 and by the AP (on Breitbart), also with more updated details regarding subsequent reactions and statements. One interesting detail:

In Stockholm, the Swedish Foreign Ministry distanced itself from that statement. “We obviously don’t think it is great to comment on what is written in the media,” ministry spokesman Anders Jorle told The Associated Press.

Is this the best that Sweden can do to redeem itself? This apparent lack of interest at decrying something so despicable only serves to implicate Sweden in the propagation of this slander.

UPDATE #2:
It looks like Sweden has finally woken up and smelled the coffee; they have finally issued a pretty strong condemnation, according to the latest report by Arutz 7:

The Israeli Foreign Ministry quickly condemned the report. “The article is a disgrace to Swedish journalism,” spokesman Yigal Palmor said. “In a democratic country there should not be dark blood libels from the Middle Ages of this type. The article embarrasses Swedish democracy and journalism.”

The Swedish Embassy in Israel agreed and quickly issued a condemnation of the article. “The article shocks the Swedes, just as it shocks the Israelis. We agree with the Israeli government, press and people that this is an unwanted article.”

“We cannot say anything more than to say that we entirely object to the article,” the embassy’s statement continued. “Just as in Israel, there is freedom of the press in Sweden. At the same time, free speech carries a responsibility that rests on the shoulders of the newspaper and the writer.”

Even though they do make the point of stressing their position of staying out of the media’s business, at least in this statement they make the important effort of condemning this article.

Another notable quote, this one by Donald Bostrom, the author of the article:

Bostrom admitted Wednesday on Voice of Israel government radio that he did not know if the accounts were true. “I conducted an interview on the story,” he said, “but if it’s true or not – I don’t know, I can’t say. I personally think it’s true.”