• Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has accused Israel of organ theft from the deceased bodies of Palestinians.
• They also accuse Israel of retaining Palestinian dead bodies.
An NGO has accused Israel’s military of extracting organs from deceased individuals in Gaza, prompting a call for an independent international inquiry.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said it had “concerns” about possible organ theft from Palestinian corpses, following reports by medical professionals in Gaza who examined some bodies after they were released by Israel.
The NGO asserted that it has evidence of Israeli forces seizing numerous deceased individuals’ bodies from al-Shifa and Indonesian hospitals in northern Gaza, as well as from facilities in the southern region.
Medical experts purportedly discovered the absence of vital organs, including livers, kidneys, and hearts, as well as cochleas and corneas, leading the Euro-Med Monitor to label it as “evidence” of potential organ theft.
Additionally, they alleged that Israel had unearthed and taken bodies from a mass grave dug over 10 days ago in a courtyard at al-Shifa.
Israel has refuted allegations of harvesting organs from deceased Palestinians without family consent, dismissing such claims as “antisemitic.”
Israel have been accused of harvesting organs for many years
In her book “Over Their Dead Bodies,” Israeli doctor Meira Weiss asserted that organs were extracted from deceased Palestinians between 1996 and 2002 for use in medical research at Israeli universities and transplantation into Israeli patients.
Jewish doctrine permits organ transplantation and harvesting, prioritising the imperative to save lives over all other religious decrees. In this instance, the use of this Jewish law is strikingly dichotomous since Palestinians are being killed in the process.
An Israeli television investigation in 2014 included admissions from senior officials that skin was obtained from the bodies of deceased Palestinians and African labourers for the treatment of Israelis, including soldiers with burn injuries.
The director of the Israeli Skin Bank disclosed that the country’s stockpile of “human skin” had reached 17 square meters- a substantial figure relative to Israel’s population.
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Euro-Med Monitor says that Israel is one of the “world’s biggest hubs for the illegal trade of human organs under the pretext of ‘security deterrence’”.
It called upon Israel to adhere to “international law” and reaffirmed the importance of upholding and safeguarding the corpses of the deceased during times of armed conflict.
Amongst the plethora of war crimes committed by Israel (including the killing of innocent civilians) the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which Israel has not ratified, mandates that combatants must uphold the dignity of deceased individuals, including by preventing desecration, mutilation, or any disrespectful handling of their bodies.
Israeli forces are said to be retaining Palestinian bodies
Euro-Med also alleged that Israel is retaining the bodies of numerous Palestinians who were killed since October 7th, although some have been transferred to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
This practice is viewed as a punitive measure aimed at depriving families of the opportunity to bury their relatives.
According to Euro-Med Monitor, Israel has a longstanding practice of retaining the bodies of deceased Palestinians.
In December 2023, the organisation asserted that Israel was in possession of the remains of at least 145 Palestinians in its morgues and around 255 individuals in its designated “Numbers Cemetery,” located near the Jordanian border and inaccessible to the public.
Refusing to hand over the bodies of the dead to grieving families for burial, is forbidden under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Euro-Med monitor highlighted.
