Saturday 7 November 2015

Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Israel’s Refusal to Turn Over the Bodies of Palestinian Dead

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 photo palestinianbodies_zpszz1ggqkf.jpg
A Palestinian father waits for the body of his 13-year-old son, Abdelrahman Obeidallah, the day after he was killed by Israeli forces.

Below you’ll find some information I’ve gathered about a policy the Israelis have of holding onto the remains of some Palestinians, refusing to return the bodies to their families for proper burial.
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian dead, and its impact on the living, is being questioned once again as the government continues to withhold the bodies of 22 Palestinians killed following attacks on Israelis during the month of October.
The refusal to turn over the dead to their families — a policy that Israeli authorities supposedly halted near the end of the Second Intifada — has provoked controversy among Israeli officials and led tomass protests in the occupied West Bank.
And see also:
Here is an excerpt:
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority representative at the United Nations claimed that other bodies which had been transferred to them “were returned with organs missing, after the occupying forces harvested organs from the Palestinian victims.”…
Palestinian Permanent Observer to the UN Riyad Mansour submitted a formal complaint against Israel on Wednesday, alleging that it had returned terrorists’ bodies with organs missing.
“A medical examination conducted on bodies of Palestinians returned after they were killed by the occupying power found that they were missing organs,” Mansour claimed in the letter.
Israel’s UN ambassador accused Mansour of “blood libel.” It is actually not a “libel” at all:
Did Hiss harvest organs from the body of Rachel Corrie? The answer appears to be yes:
On March 14, during the first round of hearings in the Corries’ civil suit, Hiss admitted under oath that he had lied about the presence of an American official during the autopsy of Rachel Corrie. He also conceded to taking “samples” from Corrie’s body for “histological testing” without informing her family. Just which parts of Corrie’s body Hiss took remains unclear; despite Hiss’s claim that he “buried” the samples, her family has not confirmed the whereabouts of her missing body parts.
“It’s so hard to know that Rachel’s body wasn’t respected,” Rachel’s sister, Sarah, told me. “Doctor Hiss and the Israeli government knew what our family’s wishes were. The fact that our wishes were disregarded and a judge hasn’t done anything is absolutely horrifying.”
Israel and its supporters would do well to drop the accusations of “blood libel” in the current climate, especially if the Jewish state plans to continue its policy of withholding the bodies of Palestinians.
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   
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