Israel Matzav

European hypocrisy exposed

On Monday, al-Guardian dredged up a 15-year old story about the former director of Abu Kabir taking corneas and skin from dead patients without permission, and spun it into a story headlined "Israel admits harvesting Palestinian organs."

On Tuesday, al-Guardian issued a correction in which they changed the headline (Hat Tip: Snapshots).

We should not have put the headline "Israel admits harvesting Palestinian organs" on a story about an admission, by the former head of the Abu Kabir forensic institute near Tel Aviv, that during the 1990s specialists at the institute harvested organs from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers without getting permission from the families of the deceased (21 December, page 15). That headline did not match the article, which made clear that the organs were not taken only from Palestinians. This was a serious editing error and the headline has been changed online to reflect the text of the story written by the reporter.

I would rather have seen that item end, "This was a serious editing error and the editor has been fired/disciplined." But al-Guardian didn't go that far, and the story's damage had not only been done already - it continues to spread.

Yet as of Tuesday evening (Iran-time), for a second straight day, the British taxpayer-funded BBC Persian language service is continuing to highlight the lie that Israel is harvesting the organs of Palestinians on its home page here, and in a story here.

You do not see such garbage on Radio Farda, which is the U.S. government’s equivalent of BBC Persian.

BBC Persian is under the direct supervision of the British foreign office. Why British politicians and commentators (including those from the Conservative Party) put up with it, is beyond me.

Isn’t the Iranian regime serving up enough anti-Semitic hate to their own public without the BBC joining in?

It's now Thursday night in Tehran, and although the item no longer appears on the BBC's home page, it still appears on the site itself. The original URL above still works. There's a Google translation here.

Meanwhile, CAMERA points out the hypocrisy of Aftonbladet, the Swedish newspaper that started the blood libel about organ harvesting, which is ignoring a story that first appeared in the Kuwait Times about Palestinians' kidneys being sold.

On October 23, CAMERA's Andrea Levin sent the following letter to Aftonbladet.

October 23, 2009

Dear Mr. Helin,

I write to bring your attention to an AFP story this week concerning organ trafficking in Jordan. Palestinians, it seems, are chief among those targeted. As the Oct 21 piece in the Kuwaiti Arab Times paper linked here notes [ed: the link to the Kuwaiti paper has been removed. The AFP original remains] :

According to a recent government study of 130 cases in which kidneys were sold, nearly 80 percent of 'donors' were Palestinians from Baqaa in northwest Amman, the largest refugee camp in the country.

We're wondering if you'll be covering this story — which is a current one, verifiable and not from 1992 as Donald Bostrom's was — about organ abuses. We assume, on the basis of Aftonbladet's August 17 story that the paper has a particular interest in organ trafficking issues, as well as the concerns of Palestinians in this regard.We look forward to your informing your readers about the trafficking reported here and the reference to Egypt, India and Pakistan as venues for harvesting organs from various vulnerable peoples.

As previously requested, we continue to urge response to our letter of September 11, 2009and corrections of errors in the August 17 Aftonbladet feature story.

Sincerely,

Andrea Levin
Executive Director and President
CAMERA

As of Wednesday, Ms. Levin had received no response to her letter. I'm sure you're all shocked.

The moral bankruptcy of Europe and its media continues.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:26 PM