Sleeper Cell

Israeli forensic pathologists routinely harvested organs from dead Palestinians in the 1990s.

This has long been a claim by Palestinian families, but was dismissed as a mere “anti-Semitic conspiracy” or shrugged off as “Palestinian paranoia”.  To be honest, while the claims seemed credible to me, I was never sure what to think of it.

Now Israeli TV (and CBS News – the online version, anyway, and for now, that is, before the site pulls the AP story after being deluged with thousands of negative complaints from pro-Israeli activists) is reporting that it’s all too true.

Ghastly.  I won’t use the N-word.

Hillary Clinton went to great pains in her autobiography to denounce a fellow Christian lady (Yasser Arafat’s wife) for “repeating the lie” that Israel had poisoned Palestinian water wells.  I don’t know Suha Arafat’s claim was proven – if someone does, let me know – but I remember thinking that such a belief/theory was plausible based on what Palestinians had already suffered at the hands of the Israelis.

In the same way, there are no doubt some political theories held by some black Americans that most whites would consider ludicrous (e.g., the CIA started AIDS as part of a genocidal effort against blacks).  But after, for example, black Americans were deliberately injected with syphilis – as recently as the 1970s – as part of a “medical experiment” by the U.S. Public Health Service (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_experiment), you can hardly blame them if they get a little suspicious and, by extension, accuse the government of committing other atrocities against blacks.

It is important to understand cultural context and political history without reflexively acceding to every extant outlandish conspiracy theory.  In this case, the Palestinians who swore their loved ones’ organs had been ripped out were vindicated.  I cringe at the thought that this may lead to an increase in sales of The Protocols of the (Learned) Elders of Zion.  And yet I maintain hope that the revelation of this horrific practise will inspire those in Palestine and in the solidarity movement to continue their work in the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

CBS News:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/20/ap/middleeast/main6001606.shtml

Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/21/israeli-pathologists-harvested-organs