By Ida Audeh
LESS THAN TWO MONTHS into the Gaza genocide, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor was asking that an “independent international investigative committee” be established to investigate Israel for possible organ theft from Palestinian corpses. Israeli soldiers were raiding mass graves at Al-Shifa Medical Complex, the Indonesian Hospital and other sites, which struck people as alarming; some bodies were returned and upon investigation by medical professionals, were found to be missing parts.
Because we live in lawless times, we should remind ourselves that there was a time when such acts were considered so heinous that their prohibition was stated in the Fourth Geneva Convention. As the International Committee of the Red Cross’ Customary International Humanitarian Law states: “Each party to the conflict must take all possible measures to prevent the dead from being despoiled. Mutilation of dead bodies is prohibited.” Israel has ratified the treaty but brazenly claims that it doesn’t apply to Gaza.
In the October 2025 prisoner exchange between Israel and the Palestinian resistance (which included an exchange of the dead held by both sides), one Palestinian corpse was returned without a head; others were returned with amputated limbs and other mutilations. In early November, on Al Jazeera Arabic, Palestinian-British plastic surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sitta described the condition of Palestinian corpses that had been returned to Gaza. Some corpses were missing vital organs—including hearts, lungs, kidneys and corneas. “Chest cavities were opened using a medical bone saw, organs were extracted without damage, and skin bore burn marks consistent with preservation chemicals,” Dr. Abu-Sitta said. In other words, bodies were dismembered by medical professionals who understood the requirements of organ transplantation.
The charge that Israel helps itself to Palestinian body parts is not new. But in light of the mountain of evidence that Israel has killed and tortured Palestinian bodies to satisfy the sadistic pleasure of its soldiers, one must consider another possible motive of the Jewish state’s military: the violation of Palestinian bodies for profit. As it turns out, organ trafficking is a lucrative trade that Israel knows a lot about.
AN OBSESSION WITH PALESTINIAN BODIES
Israel is the only country in the world that holds on to the bodies of people it kills. During the first intifada, Israel often seized the bodies of Palestinians it shot dead and then set terms for their release: families had to agree to conduct the burials quickly and at night, attended by only a few family members. People suspected that the reason was not just to avoid funerals that could become political rallies (although that was likely a consideration), but also to deprive the families of the opportunity to examine the corpses too closely.
In the 1990s, Israel was in fact removing organs of Jewish Israelis as well as Palestinians for reuse without seeking permission from families. [Washington Report published an article on this in April 1990.] NBC News reported in 2009 that Jehuda Hiss, an Israeli doctor who worked at Israel’s Abu Kabir forensic institute, told a U.S. interviewer in 2000, “We started to harvest corneas… Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family.” (To conceal the practice from families, the staff glued the eyelids shut; if they had reason to believe the family might want a last look, they refrained from removing the corneas.) In fact, as Israel’s Channel 2 reported, they went well beyond corneas and helped themselves to skin, heart valves and bones of Jews and Arabs. (Israel’s population is not inclined to donate organs and yet the country has the largest skin bank in the world.)
While it is tempting to conclude that the state acted as an equal opportunity plunderer, there is an all-important distinction to remember: the state was unlikely to have been the killer of Jewish Israelis who became unwitting organ donors, whereas it most certainly was the killer of the majority of Palestinians who ended up in Abu Kabir for autopsy and whose organs were then plucked without consequence.
The performance of autopsies on dead Palestinians at the Abu Kabir facility is itself a red flag. As British journalist Jonathan Cook noted in an Electronic Intifada article published in 2009, why perform autopsies if you don’t plan to investigate the circumstances of their murder (at the hands of the Israeli army)?
Abu Kabir is at the center of an illegal Israeli organ trafficking trade. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see dots to connect here.
British investigative journalist Kit Klarenberg revisited this sordid history in an article reporting on the recent arrest of Israeli-Ukrainian organ trafficker Boris Wolfman. Klarenberg observes in his Nov. 17 Substack page Global Delinquents that Dr. Hiss was never punished for his actions, which suggests that they were state sanctioned. Klarenberg cited the 2014 book Over Their Dead Bodies written by former Institute employee Meira Weiss, who described Israeli policy during the first intifada as one in which staff had a free hand “to seize whatever they wished from bodies in their care. Horrifyingly, Institute apparatchiks nostalgically referred to these years as the ‘good days.’”
HACKING AWAY AT PALESTINIAN BODIES
Israel claims the harvesting ended in 2000. But there is no reason to believe that Israel decided to respect the integrity of Palestinian corpses beginning in 2001. A 2009 article published on the website If Americans Knew described how Palestinian corpses have been used for instructional purposes:
In 2005 an Israeli soldier described a military doctor who gave “medics lessons in anatomy” using the bodies of Palestinians 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,’ the soldier said.
“He explained the various parts to us—the membrane that covers the lungs, the layers of the skin, the liver, stuff like that,” the soldier continued. “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.”
A LUCRATIVE REVENUE STREAM
There is every reason to believe that Palestinian organs may be used in international organ trafficking. Klarenberg describes Israel as “the world’s center of illegal organ harvesting and trafficking” and adds that “the Gaza genocide may have greatly facilitated this perverse commerce.”
In 2015, the European Parliament published a report about the illicit trade of human organs, describing it as global and “to a large extent driven by Israeli doctors.” The report described Israelis as major customers as well as leaders of the gangs that procure the body parts. Klarenberg observes that Israel is experiencing economic challenges as a result of costly wars (against the Palestinians, Hezbollah and Iran), brain drain, the sharp drop in both tourism and investor confidence, and diplomatic isolation. He writes:
“Grotesquely, organ trafficking might represent one of Tel Aviv’s few dependable profit sources at this stage. With thousands of Palestinians both dead and alive in its custody, Israel certainly has ample resources to fuel the trade. Mainstream blackout on Wolfman’s long-overdue arrest may indicate the entity’s overseas puppetmasters are relaxed about the prospect.”
The network of players spans continents and is unlikely to be affected by one arrest:
“[Wolfman] was but one player in a world-spanning nexus of Israeli traffickers. In the manner of a hydra, Wolfman’s removal will simply lead to others taking his place. After all, the returns are high, and risks mysteriously low.”
The appalling desecration of Palestinian bodies is likely to continue as long as global powers tolerate Israel’s behavior, no matter how vile. And to date, every Western proposal for a post-genocide arrangement for Gaza seems designed to ensure that Israel never runs out of Palestinian bodies to mine.
Ida Audeh is senior editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine.
8 December 2025
Source: countercurrents.org