PA libel: Israel “steals organs and skin” from “Martyrs”

Official PA TV host: “There are Martyrs (i.e., dead terrorists) who had some of their organs stolen, as witnesses have said…

Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs Qadura Fares: “It is as if Israel has sworn not to leave even [one] shameful act and even [one] crime not committed. It wants to be a crime gang in the full sense of the word…  [Israel is] the only state that steals organs, that steals skin, and steals everything.”

[Official PA TV, Jan. 2, 2024]

Qadura Fares also serves as Chairman of the PA-funded Prisoners’ Club and is a former PA minister without portfolio and former member of PA Parliament.

Organ theft - Acting Director-General of the PA Ministry of Justice’s Forensic Medicine Administration Dr. Ashraf Al-Qadi has refuted the PA libel that Israel steals organs from dead Palestinians: “All the Martyrs we have checked and seen, none of them had any theft of their organs. I don’t know about the Martyrs from before, whom we did not check as a Palestinian side or authority.” [Official PA TV, Good Morning Jerusalem, March 11, 2022] Like other PA libels, this libel contains a grain of truth that the PA has distorted into a lie. In 2001, an Israeli investigative journalist exposed that from the years 1988 to 2000, in violation of Israeli law, doctors at the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine had taken body parts for research and transplants of skin and corneas without permission from the relatives. Most body parts were taken from Israeli Jews, but also from Israeli Arabs, Israeli soldiers and Palestinian terrorists. At the time, the institute was run by Professor Yehuda Hiss who was personally involved in the scandal. Hiss was removed from his position as director but remained as chief pathologist until later investigations uncovered that he had continued his misconduct, which led to his dismissal from the Institute by the Ministry of Health in May 2012.There has been no documented case of Israeli organ theft since then.