Swedish paper accuses the Israeli Army of killing Palestinians for their organs
A reporter writing for Aftonbladet Swedish newspaper said that Israeli soldiers kidnapped and killed Palestinian youths to trade their organs. Israel’s Foreign Ministry denied the report and said it is a clear example of the efforts to demonize Israel.
The reporter, Donald Boström, said that Levy Rosenbaum, a resident of Brooklyn, is involved in the human organ trafficking.
He stated that nearly half of kidney transplants conducted in Israel since 2000 were illegally purchased from Latin America, Turkey and Eastern Europe.
The reporter also claimed that Israel’s Foreign Ministry is aware of the illegal trade but acted against it.
Rosenbaum was arrested in July after he told an undercover FBI agent that he is a “match maker”, the agent was taping him while posing as a customer. Later on, Rabbis and elected officials were arrested in New Jersey for human organ trafficking.
Rosenbaum said that he buys bodies from poor families in Israel for $10.000 and would then sell the organs to patients in the United States for $160.000.
In its report Aftonbladet claimed that Israel is the only Western state that does not condemn illegal organ trade, and fails to take any legal action against the doctors and persons involved in it.
It added that several Palestinian youths were kidnapped from their villages and towns in the Middle of the night and that they were killed, dismembered and buried.
The reporter added that he knew about the illegal trade from UN employees while he was conducting interviews for a book he was preparing in the occupied West Bank.
Boström mentioned an incident in which a Palestinian from Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank, was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers apparently for hurling stones at their jeep.
The Palestinian was shot by the soldiers in his chest, stomach and leg and was moved to an unknown location while he was in a serious condition.
His body, wrapped with bandages, was returned to his family five days later with a visible scar from neck to stomach.
Boström said in his report that several Palestinians stated that young men from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were detained by the Israeli army, and were returned to their families at a later stage, dead and missing organs.
The Israeli Foreign Minister, rejected the claims of Boström and called on the Swedish citizens ignore the “lies and inflammatory accusations”.
In July, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, netted 40 well-known figures in New Jersey for money laundering and corruption, in a scheme that involved sales of Israeli kidneys in the US and other corruption rackets.
Two members of the New Jersey state legislature and three mayors were among those captured in the raid. They are accused of running a complex network of corruption that spanned a period of decades. The FBI investigation of the money-laundering ring began ten years ago, as federal agents grew suspicious of potential international money laundering by a group of charities controlled by rabbis.
Much of the laundered money originated in Israel, and was funneled through Swiss bank accounts before ending up in New Jersey. One of the schemes involved buying kidney from “vulnerable people” in Israel for $10,000, and then selling them on the US market for $160,000.
