Gaza- Bodies torn to pieces, decapitated, and others decapitated, are among about 70 bodies of martyrs that the Israeli occupation authorities freed after kidnapping them from various places in Gaza City and cities in the northern Gaza Strip. Local authorities run by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and human rights organizations believe that they are Violated by the theft of organs or parts thereof.
The occupation army kidnapped an unknown number of bodies of martyrs from the mortuary and a mass grave inside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and the Indonesian Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, and from the displacement corridor on Salah al-Din Street connecting the north and south of the Gaza Strip.
On December 26, the occupation army released a group of martyrs’ bodies, which were placed inside 70 plastic bags and stacked inside a container transported by a truck from the Karam Abu Salem commercial crossing, southeast of the city of Rafah, to the Martyr Abu Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital in the city, in coordination with the International Committee. For the Red Cross.
“Anonymous”
Identical official and human rights sources told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that these bags contained an unspecified number of bodies of martyrs, as some of them included complete bodies, and others contained half bodies, in addition to bags of torn body parts, which complicated the task of counting them, in addition to the intransigence of the occupation army. He refused to provide information about her to help determine her identity, so she was buried “unidentified” in a mass grave west of the city of Rafah.
The occupation army is still detaining dozens of other bodies that it kidnapped from hospitals, cemeteries, and the streets of Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip, following its ground incursion on October 27.
The condition of these corpses and the foul odor emanating from them – as a result of the occupation army tampering with them and keeping them for a long period without proper procedures – made it difficult for the health authorities to be able to subject them to a careful medical examination.
According to the head of the Health Emergency Committee and the director of the Martyr Abu Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital, Dr. Marwan Al-Hams, “sand and worms were covering these bodies.”
The medical teams were unable to open these bags in the hospital, so they went directly to the cemetery, and upon examination before the burial, it was found that they contained 17 headless bodies. The head was placed next to the body in one bag, while some of the bodies were completely headless, and in other bags. , corpses with the skull visible and the scalp removed from it and placed with the corpse.
Al-Hams says – to Tel Aviv Tribune Net – that the bodies of the martyrs were of multiple skin colours, white, black and dark wheat, and of various genders and ages, for men and women, including children, young people and the elderly. One of these children had his head wrapped in a medical compression bandage as if an operation had been performed on his head.
Inside a number of bags are charred corpses. It seems to you that you are looking at ashes, according to Al-Hams’ description, who continues, “Some of the corpses are half bodies, either upper or lower.”
He added that some of the bags contained only bones from bodies that had decomposed for more than a year, and it is not known precisely to whom these bones belong or the time and place from which they were stolen, but his speech confirms that they do not belong to the martyrs of the current Israeli war, which has been escalating since the seventh of October. the past.
While the occupation refused to reveal information about these bodies, it gave the bags numbers, and the committee – under the supervision of Al-Hams – documented these bags and the bodies inside them through examination and photography and gave them special numbers before the burial.
Evidence and history of theft
The description and diagnosis of the Hams is supported by evidence presented by official Palestinian bodies and human rights organizations that indicate that the occupation has committed the crime of stealing organs or parts from the bodies of martyrs.
The Director General of the “Government Information Office” in Gaza, Ismail Al-Thawabta, told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that the occupation handed over the unidentified bodies and refused to specify the names of the martyrs and the places from which they were stolen. After inspecting them, it became clear that their features had changed significantly, in a clear indication that the occupation had stolen vital organs from them.
The government official asserts that the occupation deliberately kept the bodies of the martyrs in its possession for a long period, until they tended to dissolve or were close to decomposition, and that he “stole their organs, then closed their bodies, and deliberately delayed the delivery of the bodies until they were worn out.”
Al-Thawabta does not rule out that the occupation stole vital organs from her, such as corneas, skin, heart valves, bones, etc., reinforcing his belief in previous theft crimes committed by the occupation and extracting organs from the bodies of prisoners who were martyred inside its prisons.
Al-Thawabta himself was a witness to the occupation army kidnapping the body of the martyr Imad Khalil Ibrahim Shaheen from the Nuseirat camp (central Gaza Strip), who died from wounds he sustained near the Israeli security fence, and the occupation handed over his body in 2019 after detaining it for about a year.
Al-Thawabta says: “They killed him and kidnapped him, then handed over his body after a full year. When we went to receive the body, we were surprised that his body was frozen and the ice could not thaw until after 3 days, as the doctor had told us, because we suspected at the time that his internal organs had been stolen, as his body had been torn apart and restored.” The occupation sewed him from the top of the chest to the entire lower abdomen, and this is a clear indication that his internal organs were stolen.”
Al-Thawabta believes that stealing the martyrs’ organs is a crime added to the series of crimes committed by the occupation army, which requires the formation of a completely independent international investigation committee to investigate the kidnapping of the bodies of the martyrs and the theft of their vital organs.
The same speaker holds the International Committee of the Red Cross responsible and criticizes its position, which he described as “dull, secondary, confused, and far from humanity and morality.”
Al-Thawabta confirmed, “The International Committee was required to document how the bodies were received, describe their condition, and demand that Israel know where they were stolen, if any changes had occurred to them, whether they had personal belongings with them or not, and whether the names of the victims had been identified or not, but the Red Cross did not do that and did not.” He discloses this, and this is a problem he has, which he must rectify and submit detailed reports about.”
Tel Aviv Tribune Net was not able to obtain a comment from the International Committee regarding these accusations.
Independent international investigation
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor agrees with the “Government Media Office” on the necessity of forming an independent international investigation committee to investigate what it described as “suspicions” of the occupation army stealing organs from the bodies of martyrs it detained during its current war on Gaza.
The Observatory documented – in a detailed statement – observations made by doctors in Gaza who conducted a quick examination of some of the bodies after their release and noticed the theft of organs, such as the cornea of the eye, the cochlea, the liver, the kidneys, and the heart.
Palestinian doctors told the Observatory for Human Rights that the forensic medical examination is not sufficient to prove or deny the theft of organs, especially in light of the presence of previous surgical interventions on several bodies. However, they observed several signs indicating the possibility of organ theft.
Israel has a long history of detaining the bodies of martyrs, as it holds the bodies of at least 145 Palestinians in special refrigerators, in addition to about 255 in the Cemetery of Numbers and 75 missing persons, and refuses to acknowledge the detention of their bodies, according to the Observatory.
The Observatory adds that Israel detains the bodies of martyrs and buries them in what it calls “enemy fighters’ graves,” which are secret mass graves located in specific areas, such as closed military zones, in which burials take place anonymously, with numbers engraved on metal plates attached to the bodies or remains.
The Observatory also indicated that it had previously observed the occupation deliberately releasing the bodies of martyrs in the West Bank after a period of detention, while they were frozen at a temperature of up to 40 below zero, with the stipulation that they not be dissected, which conceals the crime of theft.
The head of the Observatory, Rami Abdo, told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that Israel has resorted in recent years to legalization that allows for the development of justifications for detaining the bodies of martyrs and stealing their organs, including the decision of the Supreme Court in Israel issued in 2019, which “allows the military ruler to detain the bodies and bury them temporarily in what are known as number cemeteries.” “.
At the end of 2021, the Israeli Knesset enacted legislation authorizing the police and army to keep the remains of Palestinian martyrs. Abdo says: “In recent years, there have been reports of illegal exploitation of the bodies of martyrs held by Israel, including stealing organs from them and using them in the laboratories of medical schools in Israeli universities.”
For her part, Israeli doctor Meir Weiss revealed – in her book “On Their Dead Bodies” – that organs were stolen from the bodies of martyrs to be transplanted into the bodies of Jewish patients, and used in medical faculties at Israeli universities to conduct research on them.
“systematic policy”
But what is more dangerous than that – according to Abdo – is what was admitted by Yehuda Hess, the former director of the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine in Israel, regarding the theft of human organs, tissues and skin of Palestinian martyrs in different periods of time, without the knowledge or consent of their families.
In 2008, the American CNN network published an investigation showing that Israel is considered the largest global center for the illegal trade in human organs, and that it has been involved in stealing internal organs from Palestinian martyrs to benefit from them illegally.
Abdo said that Israel – which is the only country that detains bodies and practices this as a systematic policy – is content with justifying this policy as an attempt at security deterrence, ignoring international charters and agreements that criminalize this.
The same spokesman stressed that refusing to hand over the bodies of the martyrs to their families to bury them with dignity, in accordance with their religious beliefs, may amount to collective punishment prohibited in Article 50 of the Hague Regulations and Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.