What do we know about Israeli organ harvesting?
Information about Israeli organ harvesting involves both documented historical practices and more recent, unverified allegations.
Historical Admissions (1990s)
In 2009, following a controversial Swedish newspaper report, Israeli authorities admitted that the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute had harvested organs—including corneas, skin, heart valves, and bones—from dead bodies without family consent during the 1990s.
- Affected Groups: The practice involved Israeli soldiers, Israeli civilians, foreign workers, and Palestinians.
- Official Response: The Israeli military and health officials stated that this informal practice ended in 2000 and that current procedures follow strict ethical and legal guidelines.
- Key Figure: Dr. Yehuda Hiss, the former head of the institute, was at the center of these admissions and was eventually removed from his post.
Recent Allegations (2023–Present)
Since the start of the conflict in Gaza on October 7, 2023, new allegations have emerged from Palestinian officials and human rights organizations.
- Gaza Medical Reports: Officials and medical professionals in Gaza have claimed that some bodies returned by Israel showed signs of tampering, such as surgical incisions and missing vital organs like hearts and kidneys.
- Euro-Med Monitor: The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has called for an independent international investigation into these claims, citing evidence of body confiscation from hospitals.
- Israeli Denial: Israel has strongly rejected these recent allegations, labeling them as baseless "blood libels" and antisemitic tropes.
Organ Trafficking Context
- Legal Changes: To combat its history as a hub for the global organ trade, Israel passed the 2008 Organ Transplant Law, which criminalized organ trafficking and the reimbursement of patients who seek transplants through illegal "transplant tourism" abroad.
- Skin Bank: Israel maintains one of the world's largest skin banks, which critics often cite as a "paradox" given the country's relatively low rate of voluntary organ donation due to religious beliefs.
Israel has a long history of holding onto the bodies of dead Palestinians, Euro-Med Monitor said, as it holds the remains of at least 145 Palestinians in its morgues and approximately 255 in its “Numbers Cemetery”, which is near the Jordanian border and off-limits to the public, in addition to 75 missing people who have not been identified by Israel.
According to the Geneva-based rights organisation, Israel stores the bodies of dead Palestinians in what it refers to as “enemy combatant graves”, which are covert mass graves situated in particular locations such as closed military zones, where interments and burials are secretly conducted. The remains or bodies of the dead are marked only with metal plates.
According to an earlier report by Euro-Med Monitor, Israeli authorities has kept the dead bodies of Palestinians in subfreezing temperatures—sometimes below 40 degrees Celsius—in order to ensure that they remain undisturbed and to possibly hide the theft of organs.
According to the human rights group, Israel has recently made it lawful to hold dead Palestinians’ bodies and steal their organs. One such decision is the 2019 Israeli Supreme Court ruling that permits the military ruler to temporarily bury the bodies in what is known as the “Numbers Cemetery”. By the end of 2021, the Israeli Knesset (or Parliament) had passed laws allowing the army and police to hold onto the bodies of dead Palestinians.
There have been reports in recent years of the unlawful use of Palestinian corpses held by Israel, including the theft of organs and their use in Israeli university medical school labs.
Israeli doctor Meira Weiss disclosed in her book Over Their Dead Bodies that organs taken from dead Palestinians were utilised in medical research at Israeli universities’ medical faculties and were transplanted into Jewish-Israeli patients’ bodies. Even more concerning are admissions made by Yehuda Hess, the former director of Israel’s Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine, about the theft of human tissues, organs, and skin from dead Palestinians over a period of time without their relatives’ knowledge or approval.
Israel is thought to be the biggest hub for the illegal global trade in human organs, according to a 2008 investigation by the American CNN network, which also revealed that Israel participated in the theft of organs from dead Palestinians for illegal use.
Euro-Med Monitor confirmed that Israel is the only country that systematically holds the dead bodies of those it kills, and is classified as one of the world’s biggest hubs for the illegal trade of human organs under the pretext of “security deterrence” and in total violation of international charters and agreements.
Like any other country, Israel must abide by the rules of international law, which stipulate the necessity of respecting and protecting the bodies of the dead during armed conflicts. The Fourth Geneva Convention stresses that, “Each party to the conflict must take all possible measures to prevent the dead from being despoiled. Mutilation of dead bodies is prohibited.”
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor also confirmed that refusing to hand over the bodies of the dead so their grieving families can bury them with dignity and in accordance with their religious beliefs may amount to collective punishment, which is strictly prohibited in Article 50 of the Hague Regulations and Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
