“We started to harvest…”

I first posted on this yesterday, but, plagued with doubts over the veracity of the first trickles of reports, I withheld it.

This morning news broke that Israel has admitted harvesting organs illegally from Palestinians, foreign workers and Israeli citizens.

When the news first broke Israel condemned promulgators of the report as ‘anti-Semitic’ and clashed with Sweden, for whom the request to stifle/deny the report was viewed  a curtailment of press freedom.

Today they concede.

And had it not been for the investigatory journalist Donald Bostrum, whose report was published in Aftonbladet in August, the world would have been none the wiser.

More poignantly, as Bostrum emphasized in an interview with Al Jazeera this morning, as journalists – nay, let us add to that in this cyber-globalized age, human beings – we have an obligation to stand up and speak.

Had Sweden capitulated to Israel’s primary accusation of anti-Semitism the plight of the Israeli, Palestinian and foreign workers would have passed unnoticed.

Although many media networks focus on the Palestinian dimension – for the macabre irony of Palestinian organs being transplanted to Israeli soldiers in wartime – it is horrific on an ethically humanitarian level foremost.

With the consent not sought of the families, forced burials in cement as soldiers watch over and the disappearances of young men from towns and villages, it is the realization of the worst of nightmares.

Let us hope that as a result of Bostrum’s report the families of those killed will at last achieve justice and peace, for this is an atrocity that affects all sides.