This is cross posted from the blog Jhate
They’re at it again. Press TV, an official Iranian news agency – fully-funded by the Iranian government — has repeated its allegation that Israelis kidnap non-Jews and harvest their organs for use as “spare parts.” In a story about real allegations that some Israelis purchase kidneys on the black market in South Africa, Press TV adds that “another report” describes an Israeli plot to “kidnap children and harvest their organs.” Press TV continues:
“According to the report, some 25,000 Ukrainian children had been brought into Israel over the past two years to be used by Israeli medical centers for their ‘spare parts.’ The Israeli military is also accused of stealing the organs of Palestinian prisoners.”
Press TV has made this heinous allegation at least three other times.
- December 23, 2009: ”An international Israeli conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs is gathering momentum…Israel has brought some 25,000 Ukrainian children into the occupied entity over the past two years in order to harvest their organs…[The children were] taken by Israeli medical centers, where they were used for ‘spare parts’….”
- September 17, 2009: “Algerian kids falling prey to Jewish ‘organ harvest’….An international Jewish conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs is gathering momentum….Bands of Moroccans and Algerians had been roaming the streets of Algerian cities in an attempt to hunt for young children. They then trafficked the kids across the border into neighboring Morocco. The children were then sold to Israelis and American Jews in Oujda, the capital of eastern Morocco, for the purpose of organ harvesting in Israel and the United States.”
- September 9, 2009: “New reports have surfaced on the arrest of yet another Jewish organ trading gang in the United States involved in the abduction of Algerian children….New York city police have arrested members of a Jewish gang who abducted Algerian children for their organs…children in western Algeria were abducted and taken to Morocco to have their kidneys harvested. Their organs were later trafficked to the United States and Israel and sold for $20,000 to $100,000 each.”
For the record, Israel does appear to have an organ trafficking problem. This year alone, police have busted such operations in July, June, and April. Google News has a bunch of older stories as well. I don’t know whether Israel’s organ trafficking problems are greater than those of any other country. Sally Satel seem to think they are in an article she wrote on Slate.com, and suggested that there is a shortage of donated kindeys in Israel because of a widespread belief that donating organs is against halachah (Jewish religious law). She may be right.
But there is a tremendous difference between legitimate allegations that some Israelis purchase kidneys on the black market, and the claim that there is an international Jewish conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs for use by Jews. If organ traffickers are like gangsters, organ harvesters are like vampires, or perhaps ghouls.
Explaining anti-Semitism (and Israel) to progressive Europeans
October 17, 2010 in Uncategorized | Tags: Antisemitism, Comment is Free, Guardian, Europe | by Adam Levick | 1 comment
I was sitting in Cafe Aroma with my new French friends, a young couple I met while on a tour in Jerusalem, having a really enjoyable conversation – the kind you often have on vacation, especially long vacations where you’re more likely to throw your usual social caution to the wind. It’s the kind of liberation you feel as the result of being by so far from everything and everyone you’ve ever known. It allows you take greater risks and throw your normal social caution to the wind. Though I’m not technically on vacation, making Aliyah (6000 miles away from the place I called home for most of my life) has definitely made me more prone to the mood I was in while backpacking across Europe in my 20s – the sense of unlimited possibilities.
I think the three of us ended up talking for over 2 hours, a conversation which revolved around many things, but politics and religion took up most of our time – which seemed quite natural given their obvious erudition and genuine curiousness. My new friends genuinely seemed to have more questions (about Judaism, Israel, the U.S.) than answers, assumptions, or specific opinions – all of which made them quite pleasant interlocutors.
My friends were not Jewish, not evangelical Christians or religious in any sense, and not in any way connected to the Jewish state in the usual way. They were simply visiting Israel out of curiousness. They were secular Europeans on vacation – the kind of visitors most countries take for granted but, in Israel, is at least a bit more unusual. Indeed, their background made me think through my answers a bit longer than I normally would have. I felt that – especially when the conversation touched on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Zionism, and, American Jewry – I was, simultaneously representing my identities as an American, a new Israeli, and a Jew more broadly.
I must admit, my answer to the question, ”why did you move to Israel” is a bit different when posed by a non-Jew, both in the broader discourse I engage in, as well as in the specific language I use. How many non-Jews, for instance, know what the word ”Aliyah” means? To what degree do I need to defend/explain the Israeli Right of Return? Even the word, ”Zionist”, for instance, tragically, often has negative connotations for many in the non-Jewish progressive community – which made me wonder if much of what I was going to say would be lost in (political) translation.
Further, while conversing with my new friends I was trying hard to take them and their questions at face value, and not put them in the pre-assigned category of progressive Europeans (of the Guardian reading variety) who are hostile towards Israel – and, indeed, there was nothing even remotely indicating they held such views. And, in fact, I found their erudition quite refreshing. Even though they may not be overly informed on the topic of modern Zionism, their education and open-mindedness allowed them absorb what I was saying with a broad understanding of the political, cultural, and religious themes I was exploring. They were truly European in the very best sense of the word. However, though their English was excellent, and I don’t think they missed much of what I was saying, there is, when discussing complex matters with non-native English speakers, always the fear that some of the nuance of the words and phrases you use may get lost or even slightly misinterpreted.
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