Israel Matzav

The despicable Gideon Levy

It was entirely predictable that someone from the Israeli media would do a sympathetic interview with Swedish 'journalist' Donald Bostrom while the blood libeler is visiting Israel. It was nearly as predictable that the interviewer would come from Haaretz, Israel's Hebrew 'Palestinian' daily. Now, we know the interviewer's identity: Gideon Levy. Why am I infuriated but not surprised?

We ate breakfast at his hotel, which borders on Am Yisrael Hai ("the people of Israel live") Street, and then we went up to his room which overlooks the sea. There he showed me the pictures he had taken of the body of the stone thrower, Bilal Ghanan, from the village of Imatin in the northern West Bank who had been shot by IDF soldiers on May 13, 1992.

The mortally wounded Ghanan was evacuated to the hospital by an Israel army helicopter and his dead body was returned to his family five days later, sewn up along its length, while Bostrom was in the village. Bostrom says the family is entitled to know what happened to their son, why his body was autopsied without his family's permission and whether the rumors are correct that his internal organs were removed at the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine.

This legitimate demand was presented by Bostrom in a very problematic article in which he hints that Palestinians were abducted and their bodies were returned without organs. The context in which he published the article, apropos of the trade in body organs by some Jews in New Jersey, also added a problematic and loaded dimension to the article. Bostrom says he published Ghanan's story in a book he wrote several years ago and also tried to have it published in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter which rejected it. He finally published it in the tabloid Aftonbladet in its daily cultural supplement, when the story about the New Jersey Jews broke.

He apparently understands that the connection between New Jersey and the suspicion, which Bostrom does not prove, of garnering organs from the Palestinians, can provide inflammatory material for anti-Semitic groups.

Bostrom says he did not like the headline given to the article: "Our sons are plundered of their organs", but he understands that the responsibility for the article lies with him. He says that dozens of Palestinians believe their family members' organs were stolen.

You have already had scandals at your forensic institute with other bodies, he says, and there is illegal trade in organs, so there is a need to investigate.

It should be added that until the Aftonbladet article came out, the Ghanan family had never claimed that organs were removed from the body, only that the body had disappeared for some period of time.

By the way, I heard that Mr. Bostrom beat his wife twenty years ago and may still be doing it. Maybe Gideon Levy can ask the Swedish government to open an investigation. After all, that accusation has at least as much of a basis as Mr. Bostrom's accusations.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:29 PM