I was under the impression that the original article was alleging a conspiracy on a much smaller scale- say, one colonel telling his officers to scavenge some body parts. Certainly not the whole IDF.
Did I misunderstand?
Here’s a translation of the article. I posted this upthread: the author suggests the the Israeli army, health officials, and big hospitals and doctors are all involved in this. He casts a very, very broad net.
Not my impression when reading the article. Its conclusions:
The innuendo is that all levels of Israeli society are colluding in the practice and that it is regular. Moreover, in the article the author claims UN officials know about it but are intimidated by Israel into silence.
No. There is not one shred of evidence to support this contention.
No, there isn’t a history of blood libel against those peoples which proves my point that organ snatching and blood libel accusations aren’t related. The accusation of nefariously taking organs for transplant is widespread and has been targeted against every race, ethnicity, and religion in the world. There is no reason to believe and no evidence to support the contention that an accusation that Israeli is taking organs from Palestinians has anything to do with historic blood libels.
It’s perfectly relevant. Your position is essentially that I can accuse China, France, Argentina, India, Australia, etc. of stealing organs without being considered racist. If I accuse Israel of doing the same thing then it becomes an antisemitic slander. It is a double standard that has no logical basis.
Aside from the fact that it’s obviously true, and has been made in other antisemitic media (see my first post).
It proves that this accusation can exist independently of a historic blood libel. It does not prove they’re not related in this instance.
This is pure BS. You provided two alleged examples (and I’ll take them at face value) and then jump to “everyone gets accused of this?” I think not.
This is a classic case of using the word “essentially” as a smoke screen that allows you to pretend I said something I didn’t say, and then ascribe a motive based on a fictional comment. 
I have said nothing of the kind, I believe nothing of the kind, it’s a crap argument, and it’s irrelevant to this topic.
I am interested in your ability to determine that things are obviously true without any evidence and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
It is impossible to prove that they are not related. However, there are two strong pieces of evidence in my favor. (1) Blood libels relate to using humans in religious rituals. Harvesting organs for transplant has nothing to do with religion, which makes the two accusations fundamentally different. (2) The accusation of stealing organs is made against many people for divergent ethnicities. Thus there is no reason to believe that Jews are being specifically targeted.
Against that you’ve offered, well, your contention that it is related with little argument to back it up.
American beaten by Guatemalans for stealing organs from kids
Ser bians/Russians accused of stealing organs
Foreigners stealing organs from indiginous tribes in Brazil
The Chinese army, doctors, and goverment are conspiring to steal organs from political prisoners. Racist or not?
The Israeli army, doctors, and government are conspiring to steal organs from captured Palestinians. Antisemitic or not?
How very interesting and curious that you should bring that up. :dubious:
I agree with you about the lack of relevancy.
It’s been an education reading your posts.
There is no rule aghainst linking to other message boards and no infraction is considered, here. However, in the interest of not providing a trail of hyperlinks that might invite some sort of “retaliatory” posts, I have severed the link in the post.
Feel free to check out the point that Malthus was making, but do not do so in a way that might invite any jerks (on either board) from contemplating a board war.
[ /modding ]
It was part of the plot in the Turkish movie: Valley of the Wolves Iraq. Haven’t seen it so I can’t comment on the Jewish side. It was also the plot of the latest X-Files movie (where the perpetrators were Russians)
Okay, that’s pretty fuckin’ crazy.
I think a knowledge of history and some common sense do count as evidence, but we’ll agree to disagree about that.
I think it’s odd that you’ve focused on this, rather than the fact that both are supposed to be perpetrated on non-Jews by Jews, and both relate murder of gentiles and the consumption of their bodies, and as a result, manifest the idea of Jews as predatory outsiders. But, sure, one involves religious rituals and the other doesn’t. You found a difference. Another is, the organ donation one doesn’t involve blood at all, just internal organs. 
Now that you’ve provided other links, this is a stronger argument. So maybe you are right that this is a pretty common urban legend that features “powerful” outsiders preying on the natives. This still places the organ donation story in that continuum since Israel is seen as a country of outsiders in the predominantly Muslim Middle East, and in this story, they are feeding off Palestinians in the same way Jews were supposed to have preyed on Christian children in the Middle Ages.
Certainly could be.
Based on history, yes. My point initially was that Israel’s harsh response to this story isn’t surprising because people have been saying this about Jews for so long to the point where a significant number of idiots might actually believe it. (I still think the criticism of the Swedish government itself was stupid.)
Ah so that’s how you know stuff is true without evidence. A neat trick.
This isn’t a fundamental requirement for either accusation. Blood libels have been issued against Christians, Wiccans, and most likely many other groups over the course of history. It is true in this case that Jews are acting against non-Jews, but that isn’t a fundamental part of either accusation.
I didn’t find “a” difference, I found a major difference. Accusing Jews of killing people to use in their religious rituals impugns all Jews and Judaism itself. On the other hand, accusing Israelis of stealing organs attacks only those directly involved in that act. One slanders an entire people and religion, while the other targets responsible individuals.
You still have shown no causal link between these two accusations. There is no indication that the author of this article said to himself, “Self, blood libels worked great in the middle ages, how can I update them for modern times?”. All he seems to have done is misinterpret some things he has seen and applied a common modern urban legend. The fleeting similarity between organ snatching and blood libels is nothing more than a coincidence.
Although I have to say your little bullshit smiley makes your case very convincing.
You have established a double standard for which there is no basis in reality. According to you I can accuse Chinese people of something without being a racist, but it is impossible for me to make that same accusation against Israel without being anti-semetic. This is blatantly unfair and poisons the debate since those who wish to argue against Israel are labeled antisemites.
How is it innuendo if Boström backs that claim up with evidence earlier in the article? He states that Israel has been routinely purchasing organs illegally from Turkey, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, citing an article in another, much more reputable Swedish paper which in turn cites a report in Ha’aretz. He also points out that because of this, France stopped collaborating with Israel on organ transplants in the 1990s, and that the Jerusalem Post stated that more European countries were expected to follow suit. Two paper trails back to Israel itself.
He then relates an event he himself was witness to, and that the family of the deceased (as well as other families he interviewed) have questions that haven’t yet been answered. Given that we know, and Israeli doctors admit, that they are involved in a medical black market, how could it possibly be an illogical stretch for Boström to wonder if there is a further connection with what he witnessed?
I can’t seem to see who did the translation.
Interestingly there is a historyof the blood libel being used against the Chinese by the Christian Right in the form of allegations of the Chinese eating aborted fetuses. What’s worse Republican politicians apparently got in the act fanning those allegations.
(The website seems to be a Christian left website ; the article appears quite well-researched. This Snopes articlerefers to the same allegations)
IMO that’s a lot worse than the Swedish case where it’s only a newspaper article and in any case the allegations are very different from the classic blood libel (and I am not even sure the newspaper strongly pushes the allegations).
Overall while I am skeptical of the allegations themselves the whole incident is much ado about nothing IMO and the demand for condemnations from the Swedish government are pretty ridiculous.
I didn’t do it, but I work as a translator from Swedish to English and I’ll vouch for the accuracy of the translation.
Thanks. I started cross-checking it to verify the translation, but after the first paragraph I noticed that it would take a while, and therefore abandoned that idea. 
Thisprovides some context for the piece:
I think the fact that it is an op-ed piece is quite relevant. It’s generally accepted that opinion writers have more leeway to speculate and push their personal opinions. That is what he is doing. He is linking his own personal observations and the allegations by Palestinians as told to him with facts about the illegal organ trade in Israel.
I don’t find the article convincing but it’s not some kind of crazy hate piece.
That’s exactly how innuendo works. Take fact A, add supposition B, and voila!
The “missing link” of course is the actual accusation - that Israelis have been stealing organs from people its soldiers have killed - is based on no evidence whatsover. It is all innuendo and supposition.
It is a far cry from the actual issues (illegal transplants) to the modern urban mythology of murder and ghoulish practices.
Here’s some more trivia about Aftonbladet.
It was founded back in 1830 by Lars Johan Hierta, as an independent newspaper, while the king controlled the others though the nobility. It quickly became popular among the people but less so with the king, who the paper criticized in many aspects. They pushed for press freedom, more free trade, better representation, more transparency, etc.
The king didn’t like the criticism which had previously been avoided by his control of other papers, so he shut the paper down and banned it. The founder was prepared with extra publication permits in other persons’ names, and changed the name of the paper to “Nya Aftonbladet” (New Aftonbladet), which later became banned as well, so it became “Tredje Aftonbladet” (Third Aftonbladet)… and so on. In 1851 he sold the paper which had at that point changed name 26 times.
So both as a politician and publisher, Hierta was an important part of the Swedish modernization reforms.
Quite sad to see what it has become :(.