Israel admits harvesting Palestinian organs

Morlar

I remember there were allegations of this going back years and years, frankly I thought they were laughable. Even in that turkish movie 'Valley of the Wolf' I thought it was hilarious to show jewish doctors harvesting muslim organs. Turns out that it was not actually too far from the truth.

Leaving aside for a moment the unproven allegation that there were instances where israel actually killed palestinians specifically for organs, does anyone consider this to be moral ?

I think in the unique reality of israel there are issues here that go beyond doing this to your own citizens, israel doing this to Palestinians seems all the more cruel given islamic funerary rites. I would be interested to see if any of the bodies who had this done to them were orthodox jews.

http://breakingnews.ie/world/israel-admits-harvesting-organs-without-family-permission-439145.html

Israel admits harvesting organs without family permission

21/12/2009 - 13:19:37

Israel has admitted that its forensic pathologists harvested organs from dead bodies in the 1990s, including from Palestinians, without permission of their families.

The issue emerged with publication of an interview with the then-head of Israel’s Abu Kabir forensic institute, Dr Jehuda Hiss.

The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic, who released it because of a huge controversy last summer over an allegation by a Swedish newspaper that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. Israel hotly denied the charge.

Parts of the interview were broadcast on Israel’s Channel 2 TV over the weekend.

In it, Hiss said: “We started to harvest corneas ... whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family.”

RATM

I don't think harvesting organs without the persons permission could ever be considered moral. Even in death we have legal rights but they are usually borne from what is considered to be the morally correct course of action that society believes is fair.

Harvesting organs without permission seems to be quite utilitarian and distasteful IMO.

Eliot Rosewater

Morlar wrote: »

I think in the unique reality of israel there are issues here that go beyond doing this to your own citizens, israel doing this to Palestinians seems all the more cruel given islamic funerary rites.

Ah yes, so its not really the harvesting organs part that annoys you, its Israels doing it does.

A thread was started about this in Politics (where this thread belongs, given that its an attempt to have a go at Israel). The opinion expressed in the opening post was much the same; it wasnt the harvesting that got the starter posting, it was Israel doing it that did.

If it was the other way around of course the excuses would be aflowing: the Palestinians are only harvesting Israeli organs to make up for the deaths Israel has caused.

Dont get me wrong, Im not an Israel sympathizer although its usually where Im nicely pigeon holed. I just dont like the premise this of thread. This isnt about organs. This is about Israel.

brianthebard

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

If it was the other way around of course the excuses would be aflowing: the Palestinians are only harvesting Israeli organs to make up for the deaths Israel has caused.

That's a pretty ridiculous assertion tbh. I think the OP's point was that not only was this harvesting done against the will/without the permission of the deceased families or the deceased, but the muslim faith has specific standards for the treatment of a dead person's body which would obviously be compromised in this case. This adds an extra dimension to the moral questions over this harvesting. In addition the op did query whether orthodox jews had also been subjected to the harvesting, but this is not covered in the article so we can only guess right now. This would also be an immoral act to carry out on someone of that faith, which in essence means this thread is not about the political issues you wanted to make it into.

Eliot Rosewater

The Palestine-Israel "discussion" is at best ridiculous. My statement was a bit ott but would I be surprised if it was used an excuse? Hardly.

Taking someones organs without permission is a bad act no matter who that person is. Just because the people it was done to were Muslim doesn't make it any worse.

brianthebard

Well then you've missed the moral, religious and ethical issues involved.