= =
[box type=”bio”] The Chief Chef at The Greanville Post has offered Texac a position as Senior Associate Chef at La Hollandaise restaurant.” [][/box]
NOTE – I was in Dallas the day JFK was murdered, 52 years ago today. I was only 3 1/2 years old, but I remember it. I was always interested in knowing what really happened, and some years later, in my early 30s, I researched the assassination quite extensively. Some of the best information I found was presented in a book and a film by Mark Lane called Rush to Judgement. He interviewed eyewitnesses who were in Dealy Plaza that day. There was a witness, a veteran of WW II, who said with certainty that he heard shots and saw smoke from the “Grassy Knoll” that day. After the Warren Commission cover-up was published, Lane again interviewed his witness, who then said, “Well, I thought I knew what I saw and heard, but after reading the government’s report, I guess I was wrong”. This article is addressed to that witness, and all those like him in the West today…
I have often been asked by my friends and comrades here in Donbass what kind of people live in the USA, asked whether they know or care about what goes on in the world around them. I say there are good people in the US, who care about others and who are smart enough to understand the interconnectedness we all share, that we are all in this together, and that what goes around, comes around. And that is true. For about 2% of the US population. The rest are something else.
The vast majority of US citizens are cowards and fools. The worst kind of cowards, those who are afraid to know the truth, much less actually do anything about it, and the worst kind of fools, those who have deceived themselves, to the point of refusing to consider even the possibility that they may be wrong, even when they are as absolutely as wrong as they can be. That is the truth about most US citizens today, about 98%, by my estimate, based on the fact that only 2% voted for Nader in the year 2000. Nader was the only candidate willing to speak the truth. Only someone who is as described above could have voted for any major party candidate in that election, or in any US election since. I voted for Nader in 2000, I worked on his campaign in Alaska. I’ve never voted since.
(Click to read George’s words.)
[dropcap]V[/dropcap]oting in the USA — what a joke. I used to believe in the system. I voted for Ron Paul back in ’88. I ran for US Senator in Minnesota in 1990. That year, I saw an Anarchist newspaper with a photo of Bush Sr. and Clinton. Above the photo, the headline read , ‘SAME SHIT, DIFFERENT PILE”. I thought that was kind of harsh. It took me ten more years to realize they were right. But I did. How about you? US elections can be compared to a fancy and quite expensive restaurant that has a single item on the menu, but with variations. It’s a shit sandwich, nice and fresh and steaming hot, but you have your choice between white Wonder Bread or organic whole wheat. Of course, they offer every kind of sauce – you can customize your sandwich like a Starbucks Double Mocha Frappe Latte Decaf Cappuccino, but it’s still a shit sandwich. And you may not have any choice whether you have to pay for it or not, but you do have one choice, and that is whether you’re gonna eat it or not. By voting, you take that first big bite. Obama is a bigger war criminal and greater shame to the history of the US than even either Bush was. And whoever comes after Obama, Republican or Democrat, will be worse still. If you vote for either of them, my friends in Cuba have a name for you…
When I went to Cuba, in 1995, I learned that the slang name there for citizens of the US was “Come’ Mierdas”, Spanish for “Shit-Eaters”. Not a very kind sobriquet, but certainly honest and appropriate. People in the US consume a steady and unvaried diet of shit – mainstream news, politics, entertainment, and the food, from McDonald’s, to GMOs, to the filth that contaminates the food produced in factory farms, it’s literally shit. If a person eats shit for long enough, they eventually get used to it. If they eat it for too long, they start to like it. That is what has happened to most US and EU citizens today. They eat shit, and they like it, and they are angrily offended by anyone who points this out, and they have exactly zero interest in considering any alternative to the shit they consume on a daily basis.
Only 0.0003% of Americans can identify Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler (USMC). Fewer still can remember what he did or said. Accidental? Yet they know what Britney Spears had for lunch.
The social contract in any civilized society, between each member of that society, can only be based on the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number of people. And by “good”, I mean the greatest opportunity for each citizen of that society to fulfill their potential as human beings. This is impossible when people don’t have access to food security, adequate housing, meaningful work and decent medical care and education, when 400 people own more wealth than 150 million, as is exactly the case in the USA today. In the USA, the social contract is based on the proposition that “I will pretend to believe your bullshit if you will pretend to believe mine”, a “positive” feedback loop based on mutual and self deception that is reinforced and increasingly distorted with every bogus interaction, whether voting, watching the news, or simply being asked “How ya doing?” and answering “Fine.”
The entire history of the USA is based on comforting, but provable and obvious, lies. The USA was founded on genocide and built by slavery. Howard Zinn’s classic People’s History of the United States is an excellent example of how false the prevailing notions, the shared lies, really are. Which is not to say that anyone who has read Zinn’s History is still not fully capable of creating their own false world view. In fact, in the West, there are as many “shit-eaters” on the Left as there are on the Right (ed: for example, the “imperialist left”). Those on the (fake) Left are just as destructive and deluded as their counterparts, their mirror images on the Right, but personally, I find them even more revolting, and I don’t mean in the revolutionary sense….
“The vast majority of US citizens are cowards and fools. The worst kind of cowards, those who are afraid to know the truth, much less actually do anything about it, and the worst kind of fools, those who have deceived themselves, to the point of refusing to consider even the possibility that they may be wrong…”
For example, I know a full grown woman with a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy. She drives a Prius, jogs, is “passionate” about recycling her garbage, is very politically correct, votes a straight Democratic Party ticket and considers herself to be intellectual and Progressive. She grew up pampered in a wealthy conservative family, went to a private boarding school, studied abroad and then married a rich husband. She reads The New York Times, and thinks she is well-informed. But I have personally heard her say “I don’t want to know.” “I don’t care about virtues or principles.” “I don’t care about other people.” “There’s no such thing as objective truth”. And she certainly meant it. Quite the philosopher, eh? She owns a couple of bars and makes her money selling alcohol to college students, and spends her time writing maudlin poems. She voted for Obama twice, and gets offended if I asks her if she has any regrets about it. She will certainly vote for Hillary Clinton or whatever crypto-fascist the Democratic Party runs, and will consider herself a superior person for doing so.The cognitive dissonance of her phony self and world view, her attempts to convince herself and others that she is a “good” person, while she does actually nothing of any genuine merit in her life, has made her bitter and resentful of anyone who makes a real effort to improve the state of the world. And the more confused and unhappy she becomes, the tighter she clings to her self-deception, the true source of her misery. How do you reach people like that? I don’t know… But I am trying.
[dropcap]I[/dropcap] know a man, an arch-conservative, who flunked out of college in his early 20’s during the draft for the Vietnam War. Rather than take a chance on getting drafted and actually serving in a war that he ardently supported, with his words and with his votes, at least until he himself became eligible for the draft, he used his family’s money and political connections to get an enlistment in the Marine Reserves, the surefire way to guarantee he would not have to go anywhere near the actual fighting. Instead, he played soldier one weekend a month and two weeks every summer, safe in the USA. (George Bush, Junior did the same thing. And then there’s Ted Nugent…) This Marine Reservist was highly offended when I pointed out that real soldiers, like myself, from the regular full time Armed Services did not really consider reservists to be soldiers. His self deception, to this day, extends to his wearing USMC logo clothing much of the time, having “Semper Fi” stickers on all his cars and going to and financially supporting USMC events. What was truly an act of cowardice and hypocrisy, he now points to as an act of courage and patriotism. He has fetishized his self deception to the point where he is proud of his “service” and the objects that are truly the symbols of his shame. But he will pretend to believe your bullshit, if you will pretend to believe his…
The manufacturing of American stupidity. It goes on 24/7.
No one—and we mean no one—has dissected American bullshit better and more fiercely than George Carlin. The most serious comic of his generation, Carlin was perhaps the most incisive underground social critic the US has ever produced. This routine is one of his signature riffs, sparing no one, and leaving no room for cowardly ambiguity.
https://youtu.be/qZYY0U3pALk
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his total inversion of truth and of reality is pervasive among the vast majority of US citizens. It is exactly what Orwell described as “Double Think” – “To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary…. To use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypocrisy you had just performed.” This is the precise mental state of most of the people in The West today, and especially in the USA. It is as dangerous as it is disgusting. People who are capable of such depths of self-deception, such hypocrisy, are not to be trusted. They are not even qualified to have an opinion, much less vote or in any other way attempt to influence the reality they fear and cannot (and will not even try to) comprehend. As Einstein said, “They are hardly worthy of the brain and spine they were born with.”
T-party militant proclaiming his political sagacity.
And the more erroneous, the more false their perception of reality, the tighter they cling to it, the more threatened and offended they are by anyone who even asks them to consider an alternative view. Because as the old saying goes, “It takes a big man to admit he’s wrong”. So, what must it take to admit that your entire world view is not just wrong, but totally 180 degrees divergent from objective reality, to admit that you have a half eaten shit sandwich in your hand? More than most people can muster, apparently. A mistake is not a “mistake” if it is an intentional lie, even if that lie is told to yourself. And if someone does have the courage and integrity to abandon the comforting lie for the hard truth, they are also forced to understand, to admit, that they have a responsibility to themselves and to the future of Humanity to do something about it. But it is so much easier, safer, and more socially acceptable to turn on the TV, pop open a beer and pretend everything is OK and will remain so. Because if you pretend to believe their bullshit, they will pretend to believe yours…
Bravo’s Southern Charm celebrity cast: Unrepentantly frivolous and privileged. Superficiality as an admired way of life.
This is the same grotesque depth of self-deception and reversal of reality that allows the Nazis of Western Ukraine to idolize a war criminal like Stepan Bandera, and to try to “rehabilitate” Hitler by saying he was “just misunderstood, and really not that bad”. People who are capable of saying this, and believing it, are capable of crimes beyond the imagination of normal human beings. US citizens who ignore the crimes of their government, at home and abroad (as long as it doesn’t affect them personally) are no better than the “Good Germans” who supported Hitler, and will eventually share their same fate. And deserve to.
Cowards hate the brave, idiots hate the wise, and liars hate the truth. It is a hatred born of fear and envy and gross self-centeredness. Those who are brave and wise and speak the truth are not welcome in the circles of the self-deceived. They are hated there, they are attacked, they are killed. But who can teach someone to overcome their cowardice except the brave? Who can teach a fool how to become wise except the wise? The definition of wisdom is “Having the ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting”. Only the truth can expose a lie. Anything else is just another lie.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he vast majority of US citizens are fools and cowards, and their rulers know this, and act accordingly. The impudence of the rulers of the USA is a measure of the impotence and futility of their subjects. And the rulers are very impudent. Every day, the rulers feel less and less compelled to even try to hide their crimes. Why bother? Obvious false flags like 9/11 or MH17 were executed in a way that shows the perpetrators did not even care if they left incontrovertible evidence behind. The majority of the people will believe what they are told to believe, what it is convenient and comfortable to believe, regardless of the evidence, and they will resent and violently resist anyone who holds the evidence up to the light and asks them to look at it. So they cower in their darkened corners, hugging their chains and licking the boots of their masters, eating their shit, while congratulating each other on their bravery and freedom, snarling at anyone with genuine courage and compassion who tries to help them to see the truth, to do what is right, and to truly be free.
Courage and compassion are the greatest human virtues, but they are not only to be found in the human realm. There are many examples of these qualities being exhibited by animals, so what does that make those creatures, those simulacra of human beings, who are devoid of these very traits? I say it makes them evil. The old saying about “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing” is not true. People who do nothing when confronted with evil are not “good people”, They are complicit in that evil, and they are evil too. What is “evil”? I have been face to face with cannibals and mass murderers, so I will tell you, because I know. Scott Peck wrote a book called People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil. He described evil as “militant ignorance”, as “a willingness to impose suffering on others in order to avoid one’s own spiritual growth”. Both definitions are spot on, and describe perfectly the US government, the majority of the US citizenry, the Kiev regime and their psychopathic henchmen.
Is there hope? Is there an answer? I don’t know. But I will speak the truth, and I will stand up for what is right. I’ve got a brain and a spine, and I’m going to use them, come what may. Even if defeat were to be inevitable, (which I do NOT believe) even if this was the Alamo or Thermopylae, that would never stop me from doing everything I can to defeat this genuine evil that is attacking Donbass and in fact, attacking the whole world.. We are defined by what we do, and what we don’t do. That is what truly tells ourselves and others who and what we really are. Words mean nothing if they are not corroborated and combined with actions. I do not consider myself a “hero”. I am just a regular guy who is doing the right thing. Yes, it is sometimes hard and dangerous, but it’s not that big of a deal. It is also sometimes very cool and very fun, so virtue really is its own reward. But if I’m just a regular guy, what does that make those who have less courage and compassion ( and less grasp of reality) than a water buffalo? It makes them part of the problem. I will help them if I can, with my words and by my example. But I will fight them if I must. There is objective truth, and it is clear to any honest person, who is right and who is wrong here, and elsewhere.
Those who deceive themselves are their own worst enemies, and ours. Our work, our work, speaks for itself, mine and yours, and for us, you and me. We are what we do. If there is hope, it lies with those who are willing to face the truth, and to speak it, and to defend it. And to do something about it. Everybody else is just a shit-eater… So, what’s for lunch?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Donbass Correspondent Russell Bentley (aka “Texac”) joined the Novorossiyan Armed Forces Vostok Battalion to fight what he (correctly) sees as the attack on the Donbass people by an illegitimate fascist entity: the Kiev regime installed and supported by the US after a thinly-veiled coup using color revolution technology. His example evokes the deeds of the Lincoln Battalion, the American volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War. As his writing gifts abundantly prove, he also channels John Reed and Hemingway in a seamless, formidable package.
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= War Diary by Russell “Texac” Bentley =
Azovs swearing in. The Nazi invocations in emblems and gestures are intentional. (Click on images for best resolution.)
If you are under 21, do not read this. If you are over 21, you have a moral obligation to read this, and view the photos, to look into the depths of human depravity, into the face of pure evil, to ponder it, to understand it, because if you do not understand it, you cannot fight it, and if you do not fight it, you cannot defeat it. And if we do not defeat it, it will defeat us…
“Nazi slaves”. Painting hanging in Donetsk museum. (Courtesy of the author. Be sure to click on image for best resolution.)
When I was on my way to Donetsk, I stopped in Rostov for a few days. I became friends with Mikael, the owner of the hostel I stayed at. He was a big, tough guy, a real Russian badass, tall, bald and muscular. He was also a veteran of the Russian Army, and a combat veteran of both Chechen wars. When I told him I was going to Donbass to fight fascists, he said ” War is bad”, and he meant it. I replied “Fascism is worse than war”. The story I am writing today explains what I meant by that…
Fascism is the philosophy of masters and slaves. Ukrainian fascists want to enslave the Russian people of Donbass, and to exterminate the ones who refuse to be slaves. If the Nazis were to take over Donbass, the men and boys here would be worked to death in the coal mines, and for the women and girls, the fate would be even worse.
I was recently speaking with a friend, a soldier in the NAF who fought at Debalsevo. He told me that during the battle, he came across a wounded Pravy Sektor Nazi with swastika tattoos and a shirt that had “Мастер”, “Master”, emblazoned across the front. The “Master” was begging for mercy. My friend finished him off, and I would have done the same. Do you think that is bad? Well, if you have been in battle against Nazis, you are entitled to an opinion about it. If you haven’t, then you’re not. Either way, read the rest of this article before you decide.
Azovs at a staging point prior to deployment.
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen I first got to Donbass, I heard the rumors about girls being plucked off the streets of cities under fascist control and never being heard from again. I was a soldier then, and tried not to think about it much. The NAF was not in a position to liberate Mariupol or Odessa, so I felt there was nothing I could do. Now, I have the proof that the rumors are true, and I have to share this information with you and with the world, to get the truth out about what the fascists are doing to our people, and why we will die before we surrender.
And why you should too…
Igor Kolomoisky, the cherubic bastard who happens to be co-owner of Ukraine’s largest financial institution, the Privat Bank, and one of the oligarchs controlling one of Ukraine’s notorious private armies, the neoNazi thugs of the Azov Battalion. A billionaire Jewish capitalist employing a fierce Nazi formation: go figure. Only in a chaotic state like today’s Ukraine.
Azov’s emblem.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here have been at least 31 documented cases of good looking teenagers, (some as young as 11 years old) who have disappeared off of the streets of Odessa in the last year. (See links below.) Not street urchins or orphans, but kids from normal families, or rather, what used to be normal families, because how can any family ever be normal again after a child from that family is kidnapped by Nazis, and the best you can hope for is they only want the organs. But judging from the age and the looks of these kids, the Nazis who stole them from their families, want to do to those kids what they will do to all of us left alive, if we let them… Make us into slaves.
What is a slave? You are a slave if you can’t say “no”. You can’t say “no” regardless of how cruel or wrong or absolutely evil your masters, the guys with the whips and the guns, are.
And no matter how twisted or depraved the orders, you will obey or you will suffer, or you will die. That is what it means to be a slave, and these little boys and girls are now slaves.
“Ukrainian fascists want to enslave the Russian people of Donbass, and to exterminate the ones who refuse to be slaves…”
And as utterly horrific as it is to imagine what those kids are going through, take a moment to consider what their parents and siblings are also going through. To know what has happened, and probably what is happening, at any given moment you think about it. And to know that the cops and the government and media aren’t going to say a goddamned thing about it, much less actually DO ANYTHING about it, because it is THEM, and their friends and flunkies who are doing it. And you can’t do shit about it. And if you try, you’ll end up in a shallow hole, with a few holes in the back of your head, or even worse… Like your kid did.
The Obamas feast Mikheil Saakashvili (then President of Georgia ) and his wife, Sandra Roelofs, at the White House in 2009. All the vultures know each other after a while. (Click to max resolution.)
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he governor of Odessa Oblast (region) is Mikael Sakashvili. He was appointed by Petro Poroshenko and granted Ukrainian citizenship, in spite of being wanted on criminal charges in his former country of Georgia (where he was president!). Sakashvili and his wife, Sandra Roelofs, have long been rumored to be major players in the international illegal human organ trade, based in Israel. Roelofs’ wikipedia page states that “SOCO” the privately financed “charity” she founded, has, since 2007, “been actively taking care of reproductive health and child welfare in Georgia.” Probably the same way they have been in Odessa. Odessa Oblast is under the military control of the “Azov” battalion, one of the most ruthless, criminal and openly neo-Nazi units in the AFU. Members of the Odessa police not only allowed the mass murder at the Worker’s Union Hall to take place last year, they were active participants in it. What help do you think they will give to these missing children or their families? Criminal government, criminal army, criminal police. THAT is what it means to live under Fascism.
S I D E B A R
THE AZOV BATTALION: FROM NEONAZI MILITIAS TO PART OF UKRAINE’S NATIONAL ARMY. Click on the bar below
The Azov Battalion
Colonel and Member of Parliament Andriy Biletsky, commander of Azov Battalion. The unit’s actual strength is a matter of dispute, but most observers put it between 300 and 1,000 members.
(Ukrainian: Батальйон Азов) is a far right neo-Nazi[1][2][3][4] all-volunteer infantry military unit forming part of military reserve of National Guard of Ukraine.[5][6][7][8] The unit is based in Mariupol in the Azov Sea coastal region.[9] It saw its first combat experience recapturing Mariupol from pro-Russian separatists forces in June 2014.[7] Initially a volunteer militia, formed as the Azov Battalion on 5 May 2014 during the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine, Azov has since been incorporated into and is armed by Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs.[10] All members of the unit are under contract of National Guard of Ukraine.[11] More than half of the Battalion members are from eastern Ukraine and speak Russian,[12] and many of its recruits come from the eastern cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.[13] The regiment’s commander is Andriy Biletsky.
In its early days, Azov was the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ special police company, led by Volodymyr Shpara, the leader of the Vasylkiv, Kiev, branch of Patriot of Ukraine and Right Sector.[14][15][16] Patrons of the battalion included Oleh Lyashko, a member of the Verkhovna Rada,[17] and billionaire Ihor Kolomoyskyi.[18] Many members of the unit were labelled “neo-Nazi” or “a far-right Ukrainian militia”.[19][20][nb 1], an accusation that Ukrainian ministerial adviser, Anton Geraschenko has denied [10][21][nb 2][nb 3]. Its polished English-language social media pages and far-right ideology have attracted fighters from other locations in Europe.[2]
On 11 June 2015 the US House of Representatives passed amendments blocking any training of Azov by US forces, citing its neo-Nazi background as the reason.[24] On 26 June, Canadian defense minister declared as well that training by Canadian forces or support would not be provided to Azov.[25]
SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA
OUR COMMENT: The above statements are so much hot air, of course, the usual “plausible denials” tendered by the empire’s “clean faces”, the politicians babbling public relations lies about the dirty tricks that come to the surface from time to time. But you can bet the empire will find ways to fund the Nazis or whoever they want to employ to carry out their filthy agenda in Eastern Europe anyway, behind the people’s back. That’s what the CIA and a multitude of other sordid secret channels do, all day long.
[/learn_more]
END OF SIDEBAR
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here has been no action or comment by Odessa authorities about the mass disappearances of children in Odessa. A single case has been solved – a criminal gang, driving around Odessa in a BMW, one member dressed in a police uniform, kidnapped an underaged girl and demanded a $20,000 ransom for her return. According to the news report, while waiting for the ransom, the gang repeatedly “raped the underaged girl in unnatural ways”. The gang was captured, and the girl rescued when they tried to collect the ransom. Note the BMW, note the police uniform, note the fact that the gang thought the family could actually pay a ransom of $20,000. They picked the wrong kid, that time, one with a family whose power and connections to the government were stronger than theirs.
Not just the children and their families, the entire society of Odessa has also been terrorized. Because if the Nazis can take the kid down the street, they can take yours too. Think for a moment what that would be like. The Horror… THAT is what we fight against here. So, pull your boots on, lock and load, and no mercy for Nazis. Victory or Death.
Russell Bentley is an advocate of the victims of the Novorussian War, and war correspondent for many media outlets, especially for The Greanville Post, the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”, and a select number of other leading political sites.
This is a simulpost with Journal NEO.
IMPORTANT LINKS
(Some of these materials are in Russian.)
News story about Odessa kids missing
ADDENDUM
The following is a compilation of related materials. More will be added at a later date.
The point here is that while prostitution did exist in the USSR, it was a matter of choice for women looking for some luxury items in return for sexual favors. As a social problem it was minuscule, since everyone was assured some social security, however modest. In the post-Soviet era, as mentioned earlier, these issues became magnified, in some regions and sectors of society reaching epidemic proportions.
Now with the advent of a broken, failed, Fascist-controlled state in Ukraine, the same problems have reached yet a new level of virulence, making the safety of ordinary citizens, especially the young, who have some value in the sexual markets, not to mention people mired in poverty, the primary targets. It is precisely this tragedy that Texac addresses in this dispatch.—PG
Israeli Organ Trafficking and Theft: From Moldova to Palestine
[learn_more]
Israeli Organ Harvesting: From Moldova To Palestine
By Alison Weir
In this photograph taken March 22, 2007, Vasile Dimineti holds a picture of his 24-year-old son, who died a year after selling his kidney. The family lives in the impoverished Moldovan village of Mingir, where about 40 of its 7,000 residents are thought to have sold a kidney. AFP photo/Daniel Mihailescu/Files
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n August Sweden’s largest newspaper published an article suggesting that Israel had been taking Palestinian internal organs. The article, by veteran photojournalist Donald Bostrom, called for an international investigation.
Israel and its partisans immediately cried “anti-Semitism,” and Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin asserted that the story was “the tip of the iceberg in terms of European funded and promoted anti-Israel hate.”
The fact is, however, that Israeli organ harvesting—sometimes with Israeli governmental funding and the participation of high Israeli officials, prominent Israeli physicians, and Israeli government ministries—has been documented for many years. Among the victims have been Palestinians.
Alison Weir executive director of If Americans Knew and is on the board of the Council for the National Interest.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes is Chancellor’s Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of California Berkeley, the founder of Organ Watch, and the author of scholarly books on organ trafficking. She is the pundit mainstream media call upon when they need expert commentary.
While Scheper-Hughes emphasizes that traffickers come from numerous nations and ethnicities, including Americans and Arabs, “Israel,” she states, “is at the top. It has tentacles reaching out worldwide.”
In a lecture last year she explained that Israeli organ traffickers “have a pyramid system at work that’s awesome…they have brokers everywhere, bank accounts everywhere; they’ve got recruiters, they’ve got translators, they’ve got travel agents who set up the visas.”
But this is no ordinary business. Organ traffickers prey on the world’s poorest, most desperate citizens, promising them what seem like astronomical sums of money ($1,000 to $10,000) in return for vital internal organs. As Scheper-Hughes points out, organ trafficking consists of “paying the poor and the hungry to slowly dismantle their bodies.”
Organ sales have been illegal in most countries for years, and the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime includes in its definition of human exploitation the extraction of organs for profit. Until very recently, however, the Israeli government not only permitted organ trafficking, it funded it.
Israelis are the leaders in “transplant tourism”—traveling to other nations to buy internal organs. While affluent individuals from numerous countries engage in this practice, Israel is unique in several ways.
First, Israelis partake at an extraordinarily high rate. According to a 2001 BBC report, Israelis buy more kidneys per capita than any other population.
Second, Israelis have the lowest donor rate in the world—one-third to one-fifth that of Europe—due in part to beliefs that Jewish religious law prohibits organ removal as “desecration of the body.”
Third, the Israeli government has enabled it. In testimony before a congressional subcommittee in 2001, Scheper-Hughes described what she termed Israel’s “national ”˜program’ of transplant tourism.” For many years the Israeli health system subsidized its citizens’ “transplant holidays,” reimbursing Israelis $80,000 for medical operations abroad, with the remaining costs largely covered by government-subsidized insurance plans. In addition, Israel’s Ministry of Defense has been directly involved, as members of the ministry or those closely related to them accompany transplant junkets.
Israeli traffickers have utilized people from diverse locations—the West Bank and Gaza, the Philippines, Eastern Europe. A BBC report described the situation in Europe’s poorest country—homeland of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman—where 90 percent of the people earn less than $2 a day: “Hundreds of Israelis have created a production line that starts in the villages of Moldova, where men today are walking around with one kidney.”
In China not long ago an Israeli paid a broker $100,000 for a kidney transplant from an 18-year-old girl. She herself received $5,000, and died following surgery. In Brazil a legislative commission found that Israeli traffickers no longer were content with just kidneys; they had begun inquiring into additional body parts—lungs, livers and corneas.
In her testimony, Scheper-Hughes pointed out that “The sale of human organs and tissues requires that certain disadvantaged individuals, populations, and even nations have been reduced to the role of ”suppliers.’ It is a scenario in which only certain bodies are broken, dismembered, fragmented, transported, processed, and sold in the interests of a more socially advantaged population…of receivers.”
In a 2008 lecture Scheper-Hughes discussed the motivations of Israeli traffickers. One was greed, she explained. The other was “revenge, restitution, reparation for the Holocaust.” She said some Israeli brokers and doctors had told her: “It’s kind of ”˜an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ We’re going to get every single kidney and liver and heart that we can. The world owes it to us.”
Organ Theft
At times traffickers coerce reluctant sellers. Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, the alleged trafficker recently arrested in an FBI sweep in New Jersey, reportedly carried a gun; when a potential organ seller wanted to back out, Rosenbaum would use his finger to simulate firing at the person’s head. Rosenbaum, believed to be part of a ring centered in Israel, is the first case of trafficking to be prosecuted in the U.S.
More often organ theft involves dead bodies—or those alleged to be dead.
Israel’s very first successful heart transplant, in fact, used a stolen heart.
In 1968 Avraham Sadegat unexpectedly died two days after being hospitalized for a stroke. When his family was able to retrieve his body (the hospital initially refused to release it) they found his chest covered with bandages—odd, they thought, for a stroke victim. Upon removing the bandages they discovered that the heart was missing.
During this time, the press was announcing Israel’s first heart transplant. The family began to raise questions, but the hospital denied any connection. After the family raised a media furor, petitioned three cabinet ministers, and signed a document that they would not sue, the hospital finally admitted it had used Sadegat’s heart.
An Israeli newspaper quoted Sadegat’s tearful wife: “From the moment he entered the hospital, they apparently saw him only as a potential source of organs and not as a man in need of treatment. They only thought about how to do the deed without us knowing.” Sadegat’s medical condition pre-organ removal is unclear. According to an Israeli media report, “Once a heart stops beating, it is no longer fit for transplantation.”
Sadegat’s family was Israeli. Had they been Palestinian, it is doubtful they would have been able to force a hospital confession—and suggestions that the first Israeli heart transplant utilized a stolen organ would, quite likely, be termed blood libels.
Yehuda Hiss, Keeper of the Morgue
Perhaps one of the most long-term and high-level cases of organ theft concerns Dr. Yehuda Hiss, Israel’s chief pathologist and, from 1988 to 2004, director of Israel’s state morgue, the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine.
One of the first indications of malfeasance occurred in 1998 and concerned a Scottish tourist named Alisdair Sinclair, who died under questionable circumstances after being taken into Israeli custody.
His family brought his body home and found that it had been autopsied. They commissioned a second autopsy at Glasgow University and discovered that Alisdair’s heart and a tiny throat bone, the hyoid, were missing. The British Embassy filed a complaint with Israel.
A heart was then sent to Scotland, but when the family requested a DNA test to confirm its identity, Hiss refused, citing prohibitive cost. DNA tests were eventually conducted but proved inconclusive. According to several reports, a researcher had put in a request for a hyoid bone around the time of Sinclair’s death and eventually received a bill for shipping costs.
Over the following years Hiss was often the center of accusations. An Israeli newspaper published an investigative report charging that diverse body parts—“legs, thighs, ovaries, breasts and testicles”—had been removed without permission and sold to medical institutions. The bodies were stuffed with broomsticks and cotton wool.
Although government investigations confirmed the main facts, little was done, and complaints continued—often from parents of dead Israeli soldiers. Finally, in 2004, Israel’s health minister removed Hiss as director of the morgue, while retaining him as Israel’s chief pathologist.
Hiss had been involved in previous controversies concerning the Israeli government. In one he was suspected of falsifying a DNA test in an investigation into the “Yemenite Children Affair,” in which a thousand children of immigrants disappeared. (Many believe that some, at least, were adopted out, for pay.) Hiss has also been accused of falsifying evidence to the commission investigating the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Palestinian Victims
For decades Palestinians have charged Israel with taking organs from Palestinians its soldiers wounded or killed.
In her subcommittee testimony Scheper-Hughes stated, “Human rights groups in the West Bank complained to me of tissue and organs stealing of slain Palestinians by Israeli pathologists at the national Israeli legal medical institute in Tel Aviv.”
A 1990 article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, for Middle East Affairs reported “widespread anxiety over organ thefts which has gripped Gaza and the West Bank since the intifada began in December of 1987,” and quoted a forensic physician: “There are indications that…organs, especially eyes and kidneys, were removed from the bodies during the first year or year and a half.”
Such statements were largely ignored, often portrayed as anti-Semitic exaggeration. According toThe Forward magazine, however, the Israeli government corroborated them in 2001. The Forwardreports that an investigation into Hiss revealed that he “seemed to view every body that ended up in his morgue, whether Israeli or Palestinian, as fair game for organ harvesting.”
Over the years a great many Palestinian bodies have “ended up” in the Israeli morgue.
Israeli forces have frequently taken custody of Palestinians they have wounded or killed. Sometimes the bodies were kept in Israel, buried in unidentified graves in what are known as “cemeteries of numbers.” In other cases they were returned late at night days later with crudely stitched naval-to-chin incisions, and Israel requiring the bereaved families to bury their children, husbands, and brothers immediately—sometimes with the electricity shut off—and Israeli soldiers overseeing the funeral.
In 2005 an Israeli soldier described a military doctor who gave “medics lessons” using the body of a Palestinian killed by Israeli forces. Haaretz reports: “The soldier said that the Palestinian’s body had been riddled with bullets and that some of his internal organs had spilled out. The doctor pronounced the man dead and then ”˜took out a knife and began to cut off parts of the body. He explained the various parts to us—the membrane that covers the lungs, the layers of the skin, the liver. ”˜I didn’t say anything because I was still new in the army. Two of the medics moved away, and one of them threw up. It was all done very brutally. It was simply contempt for the body.’”
Palestinians, of course, are an unusually vulnerable population. Human rights reports have documented a situation in which Palestinians have few real rights: Israeli forces have killed civilians with impunity, imprisoned massive numbers without charges or trials, abused prisoners, and strip-searched children. And just as Palestinians have little ability to protect their bodies when they’re living, they’re equally unable to prevent their desecration when they’re dead. By Israel’s own admission, Israeli authorities cut open Palestinian corpses without permission of the families, without public transparency, and without, it appears, normal autopsy reports.
At the same time, some Israelis hold extremist views regarding organ extraction. In 1996 Jewish Week reported that Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh, a leader of the Lubavitch sect of Judaism and the dean of a religious Jewish school in a West Bank settlement, had stated: “If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that.”
Ginsburgh elaborated: “Jewish life has infinite value. There is something infinitely more holy and unique about Jewish life than non-Jewish life.”
While the Israeli government briefly arrested Ginsburgh, and most Israelis decry such beliefs, an Israeli scholar on Jewish scriptural views and ethnic chauvinism said: “The sad thing is, these statements are in our books.” He pointed out that while such Talmudic texts were “purely theoretical” at the time they were written, now they’re being cited “in circumstances where Jews have a state and are empowered.”
Dr. A. Clare Brandabur, an American professor, writes that information in the Swedish article resonated with reports she heard during the first intifada.
She described interviewing the head of the Red Crescent in Gaza, mentioning “reports of shootings of Palestinian children at times when there were no ”˜clashes’ going on—a solitary 6-year-old entering his schoolyard in the morning with his book-bag on his back. The soldiers abducted the wounded child at gunpoint, then his body would be returned a few days later having undergone an ”˜autopsy at Abu Kabir Hospital.’”
She asked the director “if he had considered the possibility that these killings were being done for organ transplant, since…it is not allowed to take Jewish organs to save a Jewish life, but it is allowed to take the organs of non-Jews to save Jewish lives.”
He had “suspected such things,” he replied, “but since they had no access to the records of Abu Kabir Hospital, there was no way to verify these suspicions.”
The Swedish newspaper’s call for an investigation into Israel’s treatment of Palestinian bodies is now being echoed by others. Such an investigation could dispel inaccurate suspicions, absolve the innocent, and discover the guilty.
Israel and its powerful advocates abroad are doing their best to prevent that from happening.
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew. An Internet petition calling for an investigation can be viewed at
<www.ipetitions.com/petition/investigateorgantheft>. An expanded and footnoted version of this article can be viewed on the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs,’s Web site.
An Internet petition calling for an investigation can be viewed at:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/investigateorgantheft/
Footnotes:
- Bostrom, Donald, “Our sons plundered for their organs,” Aftonbladet, Aug. 17, 2009 , translated by Tlaxcala. http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=8390&lg=en. (Original Swedish version at http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab)
- Israel Insider, “Netanyahu to press Sweden to condemn blood libel,” Aug. 23, 2009 http://israelinsider.ning.com/profiles/blogs/netanyahu-to-press-sweden-to
- Tobin, Jonathan, “Swedish Anti-Semites Dig Up a Blood Libel,” CommentaryMagazine.com, Aug. 20, 2009 http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/tobin/76522
- Cassel, Matthew, “Baseless organ theft accusations will not bring Israel to justice,” The Electronic Intifada, Aug. 24, 2009 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10730.shtml
- Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, “The Organ of Last Resort,” UNESCO, www.unesco.org, July, 2001
http://www.unesco.org/courier/2001_07/uk/doss34.htm. University of California Berkeley Anthropology Faculty CV: Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Chancellor’s Professor in Medical Anthropology, Head, Doctoral Program in Medical Anthropology, Critical Studies in Medicine, Science and the Body, Director, Organs Watch http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/nsh.html
- Griffin, Drew and David Fitzpatrick, “Donor says he got thousands for his kidney,” CNN Special Investigations Unit, CNN, Sept. 2, 2009 http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/09/01/blackmarket.organs/
- Scheper-Hughes Lecture, New York PBS 13 Forum
- Osava, Mario, “BRAZIL: Poor Sell Organs to Trans-Atlantic Trafficking Ring,” Inter Press Service (IPS), Feb. 23, 2004 http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=22524
- Yeshiva World News, “CNN: Israel a Leader in Organ Trafficking,” Sept. 3, 2009 http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/General+News/38973/CNN:+Israel+a+Leader+in+Organ+Trafficking.html
- Chabin, Michele, “Organ Donation: Legal, But Still Controversial,” Jewish Week, April 9, 2008 http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c40_a7588/News/Israel.html
- Rohter, Larry, “Tracking the Sale of a Kidney on a Path of Poverty and Hope,” The New York Times, May 23, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/international/americas/23BRAZ.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=
- Shapira-Rosenberg, Efrat, “A mitzvah called organ donation,” Ynet News, June 10, 2007 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3388529,00.html
- Rohter, Larry, op. cit.
- Ibid.
- “Organs for Sale: China’s Growing Trade and Ultimate Violation of Prisoners’ Rights,” Hearing Before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights of the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, 107th Congress, First Session, June 27, 2001, Serial No. 107–29 http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa73452.000/hfa73452_0f.htm
- Lloyd-Roberts, Sue, “Europe’s poorest country supplying organs to its neighbours,” BBC Newsnight, 9/7/01 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/events/newsnight/1437345.stm
- “BRAZIL: Poor Sell Organs to Trans-Atlantic Trafficking Ring,” Mario Osava, IPS, Feb. 23, 2004 http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=22524
- New York Times
- “Israeli organ traffickers shift operations to China,” BioEdge, June 4, 2004
http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/7726/ http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/international/americas/23BRAZ.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=
- “CNN: Israel a Leader in Organ Trafficking,” Yeshiva World News, Sept. 3, 2009 http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/General+News/38973/CNN:+Israel+a+Leader+in+Organ+Trafficking.html
- “Tracking the Sale of a Kidney on a Path of Poverty and Hope,” New York Times, Larry Rohter, May 23, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/international/americas/23BRAZ.html?th
- “40 years after Israel’s first transplant, donor’s family says his heart was stolen,” Dana Weiler-Polak, Haaretz, Dec., 14, 2008 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1046041.html
- “40 years on, medical staffers from Israel’s first human heart transplant reminisce about the feat,” Judy Siegel, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 7, 2008 http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P1-159077338.html
- “Shas swing vote pushes through organ donor law,” Shahar Ilan, Haaretz, March 25, 2008 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/968084.html
- “With top rabbis’ blessing, Knesset approves organ donation law,” Shahar Ilan, Haaretz, Aug. 7, 2008 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/967871.html
- “Scottish Tourist’s Family Rejects Out-of-Court Settlement,” Netty C. Gross, The Jerusalem Report, Jan. 29, 2001
- “Attorney-General lodges complaint against Abu Kabir coroner,” Dan Izenbert, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 11, 2003
- “Hiss fired for repeated body-part scandals,” Judy Siegel, Jerusalem Post, May 11, 2004
- “Infamous Chief Pathologist to Once Again Evade Punishment,” Ezra HaLevi, Arutz Sheva Israel National News, Sept. 26, 2005 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/90518
- “Were the Children Sold?” Yechiel A. Mann, Stop-Abuse.net
http://stop-abuse.net/ym5.htm
- “The Missing Children,” Yechiel A. Mann, Stop-Abuse.net http://stop-abuse.net/ym1.htm
- “Infamous Chief Pathologist to Once Again Evade Punishment,” Ezra HaLevi, Arutz Sheva Israel National News, Sept. 26, 2005 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/90518
- “Infamous Chief Pathologist to Once Again Evade Punishment,” Ezra HaLevi, Arutz Sheva Israel National News, Sept. 26, 2005 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/90518
- “Illicit Body-Part Sales Present Widespread Problem,” By Rebecca Dube, Forward, Published Aug. 26, 2009, issue of Sept. 4, 2009 http://www.forward.com/articles/112915/
- “Palestinian corpse used for IDF anatomy lesson,” Amos Harel, Haaretz, Jan. 28, 2005 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=533018
- “The Swedish canard – not only smoke, but also fire,” Shraga Elam, Aug. 25, 2009 (posted Sept. 4, 2009) (Hebrew: http://cafe.themarker.com/view.php?t=1192567 ) http://shraga-elam.blogspot.com/2009/09/swedish-canard-not-only-smoke-but-also.html
- “Israeli lawyer sues Swedish paper,” JTA, Aug. 27, 2009 http://jta.org/news/article/2009/08/27/1007480/israeli-lawyer-sues-swedish-paper
- “Israeli lawyer sues ‘Aftonbladet’ in NY Court,” E.B. Solomont, Jerusalem Post, Aug. 26, 2009 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251145124980&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
- “Israeli Reservists To Sue Swedish Newspaper,” David Bedein, The Bulletin, August 30, 2009 http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/09/04/news/world/doc4a9aa59f46ce3700709743.prt
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