Henrichek, were you similarly bothered when the Iranian government officially protested to the government of Sweden over the Muhammad cartoons? Are you aware that in that case your government actually apologized? Isn’t the real question here why your government reacts so much more solicitously to the “hurt feelings” of Muslims than it does to those of Jews?
Yes, I think they shouldn’t have apologized for that either. I mentioned in the OP that our ambassador to Israel published an apology and condemnation after this event, and I criticized it. Same goes for the Muhammed debacle. Maybe they have reconsidered that decision and decided to take a different stance in similar future events? I doubt that our current government values Muslim hurt feelings more than Jewish ones. Maybe then the reasons were practical, due to the increased risk posed by the Muslims. I still don’t support it though.
Now I’m waiting for Obama’s apology for the God Hates Sweden campaign ;).
Fair enough too, I used to think the same thing, with the same reasoning.
Governments should be too busy and too wary of issuing out condemnations everytime they are criticised! How about they get on with doing their jobs?
Except that the allegation in question is a clear and obvious untruth that no intelligent, unbigoted person would ever believe; that, and that it’s a barely-veiled update of medieval blood libels. By not condemning the claim, the Swedish government is implying that it *might *be true - and therein lies the insult.
Sometimes you have to draw a line. I shudder to think that we live in a world where people - and governments - are afraid to call the bigots and the conspiracy theorists out.
But you can understand why the Israeli government thought it was appropriate to demand an apology from the Swedish government, right? Because the Swedish government had recently given one to the Muslim countries?
Upon reading your second cited article closer, it seems that the Pakistani claim was that our foreign ministry fully shared the views of the Muslim community, but then it continues with our FM spokeswoman rejecting the Pakistani claim. So all in all they took a neutral stance, but were “sorry if their feelings were hurt”. Which seems like a very non-committing answer.
I see one more difference between the cases. The organ allegation is a claim that can be true or false, while the cartoons were satirical drawings that can’t be mistaken. It doesn’t change much though.
Why do you draw that conclusion? Are you saying that no Jew could ever do anything bad? I clearly haven’t taken the allegations as fact, but neither would I never believe such things to be possible. People probably didn’t believe that Americans would build human pyramids of prisoners. Neither raping, sodomizing and killing them. Still it happened. So why should no unbigoted person ever even entertain the thought that it might have happened?
Lieberman’s comment likening our government’s response to WW2 events is rather stupid too.
**Henricheck **- are you familiar with the history of blood libels? You don’t engage in debate with people who make these sort of claims.
No, I am not familiar with those claims. Is there any relevance in the fact that the accused are Jews here? In that case they seem to have a pretty strong alibi, since nobody should ever believe such acts to be possible ;).
Indeed. Canadian and American soldiers have committed atrocities in the past. This is documented. Swedish soldiers might have as well, but I’m not familiar with any case where it became public, and with Sweden’s neutrality policy they probably didn’t have that many opportunities to do so. Israel is surrounded by countries that are at various levels hostile to its existence, and has a large hostile refugee population living in territories occupied by its armies. I’m sure Israeli soldiers have had plenty of occasions to commit atrocities, and while I do think most of them are well-trained professionals, it would actually surprise me if some hadn’t committed atrocities at some point.
So no, the idea that Israeli soldiers might have killed Palestinian noncombatants, and maybe even harvested and sold their organs, doesn’t seem that far-fetched on its face. And I don’t think this because the soldiers are Jews. If I was, on a daily basis, fighting terrorists supported and harboured by a large civilian population, I might very well start dehumanising this civilian population and seeing them as a collective enemy not worthy of rights. But while it’s understandable, it doesn’t make it right.
All right, I think it’s high time we take a look at the actual article for an accurate picture of what’s going on. For those who speak Swedish, here is the actual article; please take a look at it and feel free comment on anything you think I’ve overlooked or misinterpreted.
First up are a couple paragraphs on Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, a New Jersey man arrested in July for allegedly trying to broker the sale of a kidney from Israel this past July. The text of the complaint filed against him seems to indicate he said he’d done this quite a lot. The article then goes on to quote Frances Delmonici, board member of the US National Kidney Foundation, who says that other countries have also had problems with illegal organ trafficking, with possibly up to 10% of all kidney transplants worldwide being illegal.
This is apparently not the first time Israel has come under fire for unethical practices in this regard, as the article claims France stopped collaborating with Israel in the 1990s, and the Jerusalem Post wrote that other European countries were expected to follow suit. The article claims that half of the kidneys used in transplants in Israel are bought illegally from Turkey, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Far from condemning the practice or instituting safeguards against such practices, it says, the head doctors in all the major hospitals are directly involved in such operations; there is a reference to an article (Organ Purchasing Normal in Israel) in Dagens Nyheter from 2003.
Then a couple of paragraphs on Israel’s attempts around 1992 to get its citizens to become organ donors, which had some results but not enough to make a significant difference. At the same time, the article asserts, an increasing number of young Palestinian men were disappearing, only to turn up days later dead and cut open.
The author claims he was in the area working on a book, and was contacted several times by UN employees who were worried by the recent development, saying they suspected something was afoot but were unable to act on it. So, he says, he traveled around talking to Palestinian families and getting information on people like Bilal Ahmed Ganan.
The next couple of paragraphs describe how Bilal, wanted for stone-throwing, had been shot in the legs and stomach during a raid by Israeli special forces. UN and Red Crescent workers heard the shots and responded, but the Israeli soldiers took Bilal off in a jeep. Five days later the same troops were back at night with Bilal’s body in a hospital gown, and several of Bilal’s male relatives were selected to dig the grave and mix cement. As his body was lowered into the grave, it apparently became very clear that Bilal had been sliced open from belly to neck, as his burial shroud became wet. His family, and other families of disappeared Palestinians, have questioned the conditions under which their bodies have been returned - at night, under military escort, during enforced blackouts and a lockdown of the immediate area. An Israeli army spokesman says that autopsies of dead Palestinians are a routine procedure. Some figures (don’t know where he got them) quote 69 autopsies out of a total of 133 deaths, none of which occurred in the occupied territories.
I’ll finish up with a direct translation of the last two paragraphs:
Nowhere in this article does he make the direct accusation that Israel is harvesting organs from Palestinians; on the other hand, he provides some evidence that something might be going on and that further investigation could very well be warranted. The Swedish government certainly has no control over what Donald Boström says in his articles, nor over what Aftonbladet decides to print; this is nothing the Swedish government is under any obligation to apologize for and the Israeli government is overreacting by bringing it to the diplomatic level. Even the arguments about blood libel are an absurd stretch inasmuch as there is no explicitly religious connection being made here, nor is it being claimed exclusively about either Israel or Judaism. Such reactions are meant to quash debate and inquiry than facilitate them.
In short: If the guy is wrong, prove it. Don’t just label him another rabid anti-Semite, or shout about Sweden’s objectionable neutrality in WWII, or threaten a diplomatic rupture over it. None of that helps your side of the issue.
Surely not the most reliable source on the subject.
Why bring the body back? I don’t think one bleeds when one is dead.
Precisely the reasoning of the people who made death threats against the people who caricatured Mohammad.
Anyway, you should know how newspapers work. I know Israel has them. You should understand that the Swedish government doesn’t have any direct control over what appears in Swedish newspapers, and that demanding the government apologize for what a newspaper published is insulting as it directly implies the newspapers are a government mouthpiece.
Let’s take this a level more personal: You insult me, and I demand an apology from your mother. What do you think?
The author appears to have received a few death threats already.
CNN: Swedish paper’s organ harvesting article draws Israeli outrage
Have you got proof they’re lying?
Seeing as how the article explicitly mentions Bilal’s male relatives being chosen to dig a grave, I should think the answer to this particular question should be almost painfully obvious.
Neither I nor the article said anything about blood. There are other substances (like groundwater, for instance) that could just as easily have gotten the shroud wet.
Having said this, I didn’t provide a rough summation of the article to debate its finer points; I provided it because, as best as I can tell from this thread, nobody (including Henrichek) had read it thoroughly. Now that I have, I see no reason for the Israeli government to be reacting the way it is, and its demands for an official apology are ludicrous. The only reason that makes sense to me for such demands are to make the issue go away without any further investigation into its veracity. Not a positive sign from a supposedly democratic government.
What the dictionary says is not necessarily what people mean. I’ve never heard of anyone using ‘tabloid’ to refer to anything but the content of a newspaper. (Or the content of other media, on occasion)
Thank you for the article summary and commentary. You are right that I hadn’t read the article, mainly because I generally consider Aftonbladet to be a waste of everybody’s time. My intention with this thread was never a full blown debate (hence MPSIMS), so I didn’t bother. I found it ludicrous enough before examining it too closely, which is what led me to start this thread.
Your summary - and also the original article that I have now read, good summary, btw - only strengthens my previous opinion. I also fully agree with your conclusions.
(Missed edit window)
With “it” I mean the situation in general, not necessarily the article that started it all.
No, but I’m reminded of tales told when Israeli physicians put drops in Palestinian childrens eyes; they were said to be harvesting them for transplants. 
If I were doing something illegal with a body, I wouldn’t bring it back where folks could see it.
Why mention that the body was wet? That’s the detail of urban legends and UFO abductions.
My problem was I couldn’t tell if he meant something like a gossip rag, like UK’s The Sun, or something full of absurdities like The National Enquirer, or even something else, that he was familiar with but I had no frame of reference for. He just continually referred to it as a “tabloid” which he felt was enough, but I thought needed more clarification. So I went all nerdy on him about it to force the issue.