Saturday, July 25, 2009

Butchers: The hidden truth about Israel's kidney theft ring

(Note: This is a major story. Although I've done no original "in the field" research, I've stitched together published material in a way that reveals the true authorship of this crime. You won't learn about the complicity of the Israeli government anywhere else.)

Where do the kidneys come from?

I'm talking about the kidneys offered by an "organist" named Izzy Rosenbaum. The FBI scooped him up in a corruption probe that focused on pay-offs to New Jersey pols (nothing surprising about that) and money laundering by prominent rabbis:
The probe also uncovered Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, who is accused of conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant. According to the complaint, Rosenbaum said he had been brokering sale of kidneys for 10 years.

"His business was to entice vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 which he would turn around and sell for $160,000," said Marra.
Marra is a US attorney involved with the case. News accounts like the one quoted above have led the public to believe that the "donors" were both willing and compensated, and that this operation was purely private. But good evidence indicates that the matter is far, far more troubling.

The kidneys were "donated" at gunpoint by unwilling victims.

The Israeli government directed Rosenbaum's grisly scheme.


Major American hospitals wittingly participated in the plot.

Before we get to that evidence, let us confront two simple questions: Whose kidneys, exactly, were taken? And what kind of doctor would extract a kidney from a healthy patient?
"I am what you call a matchmaker," the complaint quotes Rosenbaum as telling the undercover agent.

Had the transaction been real, federal authorities said, it would have been the most recent chapter in Rosenbaum's 10-year career as an illicit middleman. In each case, he would take a blood sample from a prospective recipient and give it to an associate at an insurance company who could analyze it at a lab without arousing suspicion. The sample would then be shipped to Israel, and the necessary people paid off to find a match.

"He prayed on vulnerable people, " said assistant US district attorney Mark McCarron.
Rosenbaum would then arrange the donor's flight to New York, including obtaining a visa, authorities said. Once the donor arrived in the US, Rosenbaum would help fabricate a relationship between donor and recipient -- a story both would repeat during interviews with medical professionals. The two might pretend to business associates, for instance, or close friends from a religious congregation.

"The hospitals seemed to be in the dark," McCarron said.
As we shall see, we should take that last statement with a grain of salt roughly the size of Lot's wife.

A close reading of the actual indictment of Rosenbaum (pdf) is troubling. Rosenbaum spilled his guts (so to speak) to an undercover informant posing as a prospective organ purchaser. During these interviews, an FBI agent posed as the purchaser's secretary.

Let's look at some excerpts from the indictment. "UC" refers to the informant, whose real name is Solomon Dwek.
The UC asked defendant ROSENBAUM how defendant ROSENBAUM could obtain a kidney on behalf of UC’s uncle, and defendant ROSENBAUM explained that defendant ROSENBAUM could send a blood sample from the UC’s uncle to Israel to find a matching prospective donor. Defendant ROSENBAUM added that "if you want to arrange it faster, then I, I bring the donor over here... The hospital is the authority who decide it's a match or not. Not me, not you, not him, not nobody."
Defendant ROSENBAUM then explained that it would be necessary to fabricate some sort of relationship between the donor and the recipient. Defendant ROSENBAUM stated that "we put together something–-the relationship. The hospital is asking what's the relationship between” the donor and the recipient. Defendant ROSENBAUM continued, “So we put in a relationship, friends, or neighbor, or business relations, any relation.”
Defendant ROSENBAUM explained that he was not a surgeon and that once he had brought a willing donor to this country, "it's beyond my control." He did add that "I take care of [the donor] after, after the surgery also.” When pressed on this last point, defendant ROSENBAUM explained that "I place him somewhere,” to look after the donor. Defendant ROSENBAUM further stated: “You have to babysit him like a baby because he may have a language problem, maybe not." Defendant ROSENBAUM explained the process of finding a donor in Israel and stated that "[t]here are people over there hurting . . . One of the reasons it's so expensive is because you have to shmear (meaning pay various individuals for their assistance) all the time."

11. Defendant ROSENBAUM indicated that among those who would need to be paid were the donor and the doctors in Israel who would examine the donor, and further added that there would be expenses incurred for preparing the Visa work and paying the donor's expenses while in the United States.
The only evidence that the donor would be willing came from Rosenbaum, who had the following motives for lying:

1. He needed to ease the conscience of the prospective recipient.

2. He needed to justify the large amount of cash involved.

3. He needed to protect the hospitals and doctors involved with his operation. Rosenbaum understood that he was engaged in a risky business, and that even if he got caught, he would still need to provide cover for any hospital or surgeon connected to this wretched business.

Do we have evidence of that the donors were coerced? Yes. In fact, we have the testimony of an "insider" witness:
Nancy Scheper-Hughes of the University of California, Berkeley, was and is very clear as to Rosenbaum's role in the ring.

"He is the main U.S. broker for an international trafficking network," she said.

Her sources include a man who started working with Rosenbaum imagining he was helping people in desperate need. The man then began to see the donors, or to be more accurate, sellers, who were flown in from impoverished countries such as Moldova.

"He said it was awful. These people would be brought in and they didn't even know what they were supposed to be doing and they would want to go home and they would cry," Scheper-Hughes said.

The man called Rosenbaum "a thug" who would pull out a pistol he was apparently licensed to carry and tell the sellers, "You're here. A deal is a deal. Now, you'll give us a kidney or you'll never go home.'
(Moldava, incidentally, is a small country bordering the Ukraine.)

Scheper-Hughes, who is writing a book on this topic, went to the FBI in 2002. They dismissed her evidence. The State Department issued a 2004 report which labeled organ trafficking an "urban legend." By contrast, authorities in other countries acted on her leads and made arrests.
Scheper-Hughes had better luck in Brazil and in South Africa, where law enforcement corroborated her findings and acted decisively.

But the ring kept operating elsewhere. Scheper-Hughes visited villages in Moldova where, "20% of the men were siphoned off to be kidney sellers in this same scheme."
We must now pause to re-think Rosenbaum's statements to the FBI informant. How could any rational person working for a hospital buy the story that the recipients -- American Jews -- attended services with Brazilians and Africans?

You can see a lecture by the heroic Nancy Scheper-Hughes here. The video also gives her resume, which is extremely impressive. Her testimony to a House subcommittee is here.

NPR's Brian Lehrer interviewed Scheper-Hughes yesterday morning. An excerpt:
I had begun to unravel a huge network -- a criminal network that really looks like, smells like, kind of a mafia. The head office of the pyramid scheme originated in Israel, with brokers placed in Turkey; in New York City; in Philadelphia; in Durban; in Johannesburg; in Recife, Brazil; Moldova -- all over the place. And I used my ethnographic investigative skills to just go country-hopping and try to connect the dots.

Eventually, it brought me to Isaac Rosenbaum being the head broker for Ilan Peri in Israel, who is the don, basically, of the operation, and who is a slippery guy. The Israelis tried to nail him and arrest him. They tried to get him on tax evasion and he escaped to Germany. I think he's back in Israel.
A cynic might posit that Mr. Peri has what Mossad calls "a horse" pulling for him. (A "horse" is an Israeli slang term for a big shot offering covert aid.) Although he has left a very scant public trail, Mr. Peri and his operation are mentioned in this 2004 story.

This fascinating article from Agence-France Presse offers blockbuster information. A retired Israeli army officer named Geldaya Tauber Gady was arrested in Brazil for his participation in this international organ trafficking ring. (I suspect that the information from Scheper-Hughes -- which was taken seriously in Brazil -- led to Gady's arrest.)

He told the court that the Israeli government financed the operation. Not only that:
Gady told the court that an Israeli government official, identified only as Ilan, put him in touch with an intermediary in Brazil...
Gady's courtroom testimony puts the Rosenbaum case in an entirely new light.

The American media's coverage has led the public to believe that Rosenbaum's kidney trafficking was purely a matter of private enrichment. But a former Israeli officer has said under oath that the Israeli government runs this ring, and that the master of the ring -- "Ilan" is obviously Ilan Peri -- functions as an agent of that government.

(Now I'm wondering: Was the Israeli government involved with the money laundering conducted through New Jersey synagogues?)

Frankly, I suspect that Scheper-Hughes knows all about Gady's testimony and its implications for the Rosenbaum case. She probably has chosen to keep mum about it in order not to lose credibility with the American media.

The Lehrer interview with Scheper-Hughes goes on to deliver more details about her findings in Moldova. In villages there, many young men reported that they had been told that they expect to find work in other countries (including the United States) as house painters. Once in the new country, they were forced to give up their kidneys.

According to Scheper-Hughes' informant within Rosenbaum's organization, confused and disoriented Russians would be flown into New York City by Israeli brokers who forced them at gunpoint to "donate" kidneys.
Scheper-Hughes: They told me the names of the hospitals, and they were our best hospitals!

Brian Lehrer: And did they know, professor, that they were performing kidney surgery on people who were unwilling participants and were being exploited and threatened?

Scheper-Hughes: My sense is, how could some of them not have known? The people that arrived, some of them didn't speak the same languages, they were poor, they were disoriented...

We have rules. We have transplant coordinating committees. We have ethical guidelines. And you don't just let people walk in off the streets.
She goes on to name Mount Sinai hospital, against whom she has videotaped evidence. She brought the videotape to the attention of 60 Minutes, which did not broadcast it. Later in the interview, she refers to operations done at Albert Einstein Medical Center. Mount Sinai says that its kidney donors "undergo an extensive evaluation to provide for their safety and well-being."

Over the years, many have accused Israel of trafficking in the organs of Palestinians. The Palestinians themselves have no doubt that the practice is common.

Unfortunately, many of the websites trumpeting charges of Israeli organ theft often display an undeniable anti-Semitic bent. Some of the allegations I've looked into do indeed appear to be spurious. (I would, for example, dismiss any claim that traces back to so notorious a source as La Voz de Atlan.) But before you categorize all such accusations as fantasies, consider: As recently as 2004, the State Department officially denounced as mythical the claim that organ trafficking occurs in the United States. As we now know, that "myth" had a basis in reality.

Knee-jerk accusations of anti-Semitism should not deter us from conducting candid and unbiased research into Israel's record. I would note that those who discuss organ trafficking in India and China are not accused of racial animosity toward the Indians or the Chinese.

This online book
is written to a high standard and cites responsible sources, including Scheper-Hughes. The endnotes attribute the following story to the respected author David Yallop:
West Bank, 8th of February 1988

Nineteen years old Khader Elias Tarazi, a Christian Palestinian, went shopping for groceries in the Gaza. Upon returning with two bags on his bicycle he crossed a road near a demonstration where stone throwers were fleeing Israeli Army soldiers. The soldiers grabbed Khader and beat his head and body with truncheons. Shopkeepers shouted that Khader wasn’t involved but soldiers broke one of Khader's arms and a leg. They continued the beating then threw him onto the bonnet of their jeep handcuffing the now unconscious Khader to the front crash bar. They drove off continually braking hard whereupon he sustained further injuries including a broken back, skull injuries and his face kept banging against the bonnet.

The Israeli doctor at the Military Prison in Gaza refused to attend Khader because of his serious injuries and inadequate paperwork. He was taken to Ansar Two prison and thrown into a prisoner tent holding thirty to forty prisoners. The other Palestinian prisoners screamed that he must be taken to hospital and the guards responded by forcing them to strip naked and stand outside in the winter cold. Khader died in the tent and later was taken to Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheva and pronounced dead.

Khader’s mother was outside the prison where Israeli officials denied they had a prisoner by his name inside. Later, they admitted he was inside but said he must have been very sick when he went out shopping because he was now dead.

Israeli officials refused to hand over the body and it was transferred to Abu Kabeer hospital, officially for a post-mortem. Mrs Tarazi told David Yallop that during this time many of his organs were illegally removed from his body.

No inquiry was made into the death and the Tarazi family were told if they continued to ask for an inquiry they would be looking for trouble. Five months later soldiers and secret police visited the Tarazi house at midnight, beat up Khader’s brother and father and threw the former into Ansar Three prison.
Yallop is also the source for the following:
West Bank, 30th of October, 1988

When Roman Catholic Palestinians were leaving mass they were confronted by the Israeli Army and began throwing stones. Nineteen-year old Iyad Bishara Abu Saada was killed by a plastic bullet that cut an abdominal artery. The same grim chase for the body entailed. The mourners eluded the Israelis and Iyad was buried a few hours later. Somewhat predictably the Israelis fired teargas canisters into the family home four days later. Mrs Saada told David Yallop the practice of removing organs was common and named Arab and Israeli hospitals where she said organs were removed. She said doctors, accompanied by soldiers, offered large amounts of money to parents of the killed.
Mary Barrett, identified as a Boston-based photo-journalist (I know nothing else about her) wrote this piece in 1990.
Dr. Abu Ghazalch attributes the widespread anxiety over organ thefts which has gripped Gaza and the West Bank since the intifada began in December of 1987 to several factors. "There are indications that for one reason or another, organs. especially eyes and kidneys, were removed from the bodies during the first year or year and a half'. There were just too many reports by credible people for there to he nothing happening. If someone is shot in the head and comes home in a plastic bag without internal organs, what will people assume'?
The doctor went on to state that there were "fewer incidents which point in that direction" as of 1990. Incidentally, the story mentions Dr. Yehuda Hiss, more recently accused of harvesting organs from fallen Israeli soldiers without permission.

According to a story which was published in Ha'aretz (a source not open to charges of anti-Semitism), Romanian authorities have accused an Israeli adoption agency of being part of a global organ theft conspiracy.
The Romanian Embassy in Israel has asked for, and received from the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry, a list of all children born in Romania who have been brought to Israel for adoption in recent years. The Romanian officials are trying to ascertain if all such children arrived in Israel with all organs in their bodies.
Let's close with a tale about a willing Palestinian organ donation.

In 2005, in the town of Jenin, the Israeli Defense Forces shot and killed a Palestinian child named Ahmed Khatib. His grieving father allowed the child's various organs to be used to save the lives of other children, both Jewish and Arab. A generous and humane offer. Nevertheless, the father of a Jewish girl whose life was saved said that he would never allow his daughter to befriend an Arab -- for fear of "bad influence."

(I hope my readers will help draw attention to this story. Normally I do not ask others to link to one of my articles, but in this case I must.)

41 comments:

Gary McGowan said...

"alas, we have only the opening paragraphs"

Methinks not so...

http://www.mombu.com/culture/canada/t-israel-wants-your-kidney-1615405.html

- or -

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/artbellfanschatting/message/4005

ellen rosner said...

This is such an astounding important story which is receiving hardly any news, even across the blogsphere.

The interview with Nancy Scheper-Hughes is amazing.
Where is the follow-up?
The entire story has disappeared.

http://rogueprimate.wordpress.com/

Anonymous said...

On Arche de Zoe:

the complaint was for child abduction:

from wiki:

Six members of the group were convicted on 26 December 2007 and sentenced to eight years of forced labor, although under an accord between Chad and France they will serve their sentences in France, which has no forced labor in its penal system. Each of the six was also ordered to pay each of the 103 victims restitution equal to approximately $87,000, which amounts to $8.9M per defendant. The founder, Eric Breteau, is among the six.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoé's_Ark

Ana

Joseph Cannon said...

Gary, Ana: I've rewritten, based on your links.

I've expanded the information on Zoe's Ark. I'm amazed that this scandal did not receive any mention in this country.

Joseph Cannon said...

After further reflection, I decided to excise the section on Zoe's Ark. The case requires much more research than I can do today. Although a website based in Chad (with a political agenda) accused the group of being a front for Israel, nearly all other sources treat the group as French and French only. However, it is true that the president of Chad has accused the group of being motivated by the market in organ trafficking.

I should return to that story when I've sorted it out.

Alessandro Machi said...

Lets suspend the morality aspect for a moment and have a pricing discussion.

If the payout were more equitable, say the organ owner gets 40% and the middleperson gets 60%, would that make the act of selling an organ less egregious?

Part of the outrage, I think, is that the organ owner only gets 10,000 dollars and the buyer resells for 160,000

From a business point of view, is that the only way this type of market can exist, by not being able to "share the wealth"?

Is it possible that if the organizer of these organ sales tried to be more inclusive in pricing, and the organ owner got 70 grand and the middleperson got 90 grand, that the story would be less controversial?

If Organ sellers were offered 70,000, might there be a flood of organ owners demanding to sell their organs for 70 grand?

Is it possible that the middle person is actually doing everybody a service by only catering to the really desperate, those who are happy with 10,000 dollars, while not tempting those who might do it for 70,000?

Just asking. Any ideas?

Gary McGowan said...

Re the online book chapter posted in report, it is archived here:
http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/23910/20070525-0000/www.geocities.com/organdonate/organsellingorgantheft.html

The geocities link in the article will be kaput soon. Geocities has notified all folks with sites to save their stuff, because it's going to disappear (Sorry, I forget exactly when.)

RedDragon said...

Careful Joe. You just may may be branded an "Anti-Semitic" by posting this!

( that was a bit of snark by the way....LOL )

I'm glad you posted this Joe. I had a niece that died at the age of 7 because there wasn't a liver for her. The people that traffic in this bullshit need to be strung the EFF up!

ellen rosner said...

This article from a Newsweek blog shows that Scheper-Hughes has been trying for a long time to break this story:
"When we reported on organ trafficking late last year, my main source for the story, a medical anthropologist by the name of Nancy Scheper-Hughes, told me that a couple of rabbis and synagogues in Brooklyn, N.Y., had been repeatedly been cited by her informants as well-known organ brokers. Nancy has done an extraordinary amount of detective work in the past two decades mapping the organs trade across the globe."

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thehumancondition/archive/2009/07/24/jeneen-interlandi-nobody-cares-about-organ-trafficking.aspx

Anonymous said...

Waiit till everyone learns of the other links to this! Whoa!

Marty Didier
Northbrook, IL

Eric said...

You people don't get it. Rosenbaum and his colleagues are providing much needed liquidity to the organs market. They're like any other market maker, finding people with organs who cannot or do not want to sell and matching them with people desperate to buy. Soon enough I expect Goldman Sachs and other banks will see this and start providing all sorts of organ related derivatives. Bully for the free market, I say.

Leloup/France said...

the "Arch of Zoé" is a bunch of French nutcases that created a major scandal in France (and Africa) by "abducting" Darfurian refugee kids in Chadians camps. Those guys were into making themselves a name in the NGO sphere and it miserably failed. It's probable that they were conned by the locals who "sold" the children to the stupid white men. Since there are no papers on those kids, anybody could claim that they were the parents. The only really dark side of the story is that the Arch completely illegally promised some French families that they could adopt the children, and of course some families donated to the "rescue" project. They are sued for that too. The accusations of organ trafficking are probably completely baseless and only come from the Chadian government, who is pissed at France who doesn't want to pay the million € fines they have been sentenced to by the Chadian justice.

dakinikat said...

This comes under the heading of the truth is stranger than fiction.

If there's a market for anything, there will be some one to figure out a way to satisfy it.

I have no idea what will be done about this in a legal framework, but something tells me the Greater Ethos will have to sort it all out.

Anonymous said...

I also don’t think the Arche de Zoe lot were involved in organ trafficking. It was just plain old child trafficking under a ‘humanitarian’ mask - treating third world children as commodities that can be bought (acquired) and sold (adopted, how sweet) which churns up revenue, media fame, kudos, etc.

Post colonialists (Chad used to be part of French Equatorial Africa) showing they can act with impunity, possibly even with shadow support of the Gvmt. (see the rumors about Kouchner) - “legal” mass kidnapping! (Which ended badly for the perps.)

Ana

Anonymous said...

Many years ago Scifi author Larry Niven invented a term for this:

"Organlegging"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organlegging

Big Dan said...

OK, great reporting!

ellen rosner said...

People ought to pressure Brian Lehrer, http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/2009/07/27.
He said he would have whistle-blower Nancy Scheper-Hughes back on to follow-up last week's story on the organ-stealing, but I have a feeling WNYC (being pro-Israel) will be happy to let this drop.

Alessandro Machi said...

I'd rather someone be paid to donate an organ, then to be a suicide bomber.

Anonymous said...

Israel has quite an institutional history of acquiring body parts for transplant in nefarious ways. See this article from a few months ago:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1046041.html

Nibbles McGee said...

"I'd rather someone be paid to donate an organ, then to be a suicide bomber."

Mr. Machi--what? Please follow that up with some kind of justification.

AmericanGoy said...

Linked to my blog.

Here's what will happen:
1) This story will completely disappear from the mainstream media

2) The people arrested in this will be let go and apologized to, possibly collecting some money from successfully suing anti-semitic elements in law enforcement.

Alessandro Machi said...

For some reason I missed the part that the organs are sold at gunpoint. Of course that would be completely wrong and the people involved should be given the death penalty.

Alessandro Machi said...

and their organs sold for a dollar.

Anonymous said...

Organ donation is not a risk free, or low risk activity for the donor. I am sure I have read that in fact the donors are never well again. Humans can live with one kidney, but they cannot eat freely and need intensive medical care. In the absence of this they die very early.

Besides, much of this article is not about donation. Its about theft.

Harry

Anonymous said...

You do know that this story of money-laundering by ultra-orthodox Jews in NY isn't the first, don't you? On Dec. 17, 2007 5 members of Spinka were indicted for round tripping via tax-deductible charities. The money went through Israel, the laundry got a cut and the American Jews got the remainder tax free via L.A. It was a NY-Tel Aviv-LA scheme began in 1996 and described by the Feds as the tip of the iceberg.

The guy who gave up this conspiracy did it in exchange for leniency on another activity - which involved healthcare fraud - which is another scandal. I wonder if the two schemes, the kidneys and the money laundering don't overlap a bit, as in they offered financing as well as kidneys.

Thanks for your reporting on this story. I think this is still the tip of the iceberg.

b said...

So what can we do? Here's what: boycott, divest, sanction. This story won't be running in the major media. Google's Israeli too - but few care.

Anonymous said...

44 arrested in N.J. corruption sweep

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/51549852.html

This was the front page headline in our local paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer.

I have to go back and read it and this blog. When I saw the headline, I just thought it was the usual political payoffs, etc.

I did notice that the investigation had gone on for years, and they did mention rabbis were involved, and organ selling, but the focus seemed to be on the elected officials.

Anyway, just thought I'd add this report to the mix.

Fran in Phila.

Joseph Cannon said...

b - Google is Israeli? Where do you get that?

It would add interest to the discussion of their new OS.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for doing this post, Cannonfire, you can count on at least one person to be spreading the word.

Anonymous said...

I forgot to tell you the guy's name was Robert Kasirer, and like Dwek, he was accused of breaking the law against moser. The big debate was whether the prohibition against outing a fellow tribe member applied to something like this. Imagine if there was a gentile version of moser in which no gentile could tell on another if they were conducting crime against Jews.

Kasirer bought hospitals from Col/HCA of Sen. Frist fame. He used them for bond fraud.

Joseph Cannon said...

Well, I don't feel comfortable with the "tribe" nomenclature. And I've been very careful, I think, to make sure that my words here do not apply to all or even most or even the vast majority of Jews. As I've noted, the illicit traffic in body parts is also a huge problem in Brazil, India and China, and elsewhere. One can talk about ths problem and condemn it without falling into racial prejudice against Brazilians, Chinese, Indians and so forth.

DancingOpossum said...

Staggering stuff!

Just sent a link to the Angry Arab. He's got a huge and active readership who will definitely get the word out.

Greg Bacon said...

So, a Palestinian teenager disappears from the West Bank and three days later in New York, 'Moshe' gets a kidney transplant.

There are still 59 Gazans missing from Israel's latest invasion this past year.

Wonder how many got 'harvested?'

Anonymous said...

Nor do mine. But you can't discuss moser without referring to the concept. The point being that most Jews would NOT think that tribal identity applied to organized crime. But organized crime has hidden itself behind that solidarity and that prohibition against pointing in that general direction.

IMO, the money laundering scheme is based on bigotry. although not in the way we usually think about it.

Anonymous said...

New Jersey Political Consultant Facing Bribe Charge Is Found Dead
July 29th, 2009

Via: New York Times:

A veteran New Jersey political consultant who was among dozens arrested in a huge corruption sweep last week was found dead in his Jersey City apartment on Tuesday, the same day that one of three mayors charged in the case resigned.

The circumstances surrounding the death of the consultant, Jack M. Shaw, are “suspicious,” said Edward J. DeFazio, the Hudson County prosecutor. He said it did not appear to be a homicide. “It could be natural, it could be accidental, it could be suicide,” he said, refusing to elaborate. An autopsy is set for Wednesday.

His death, reported by a companion to the authorities at 5:17 p.m., came hours after Dennis Elwell, the mayor of Secaucus, stepped down, becoming the first elected official to quit after being charged in the sprawling political corruption case.

Mr. Shaw, 61, once an adviser to some of New Jersey’s most influential Democrats, more recently worked mainly for developers doing business in Hudson County. A top client was Metrovest Equities, developer of the Beacon, a 10-building apartment complex on the site of the former Jersey City Medical Center.

Anonymous said...

The State Department issued a 2004 report which labeled organ trafficking an "urban legend."

The reports of this type I have seen were referring to the "I was in vacation in a foreign country and woke up missing a kidney" story (which of course is a silly one, given the odds of you being a match with someone who needs an organ right at that moment as well as there being a sufficiently-well-equipped operating room available in the immediate area).
What you described would be pretty much the only practical way to do it: screen a number of donors and use actual hospital facilities.


Sergei Rostov

Anonymous said...

Dr. Yehuda Hiss as state coroner, covered up the Rabin assassination with his phoney autopsy.

RABIN'S LAST DOCTOR by Barry Chamish



We now enter the realm of the truly bizarre as we look at the doctor who last examined Yitzhak Rabin, the State Pathologist, Dr. Yehuda Hiss. Israelis know too well that their government's coroner is corrupt. In September 1999, Judge Ruth Orr overturned a conviction against a Jewish resident of Judea and Samaria for the shooting murder of an Arab boy because she accused Dr. Hiss of forging the forensic evidence against him. It was the second time in a year that a murder conviction was overturned because Hiss had falsified an autopsy for political purposes. He had earlier been caught doctoring the facts to secure a wrongful rap against the parents of a murdered child.
His biggest fabrication of all occurred after the country's most ghastly scandal was proven. In the first decade of Israel's existence, the Labor government kidnapped over 4500 babies, mostly of new Yemenite immigrant parents, and sold them off for adoption and medical experiments, mostly abroad. Through the efforts of Yemenite groups fighting to expose this crime, three years ago one mother, Margalit Omeisse was reunited with her daughter Celia Levine, given up for adoption to a California couple almost half a century before. Besides looking like twins, the Hebrew University genetics laboratory proved they were mother and daughter by DNA testing. Dr. Hiss retested the two for the government and lo and behold, found that Hebrew University was wrong.
And that's why his nickname in certain circles is Dr. Coverup.
People started calling him that about a year after the Rabin assassination. He conducted a partial autopsy of Rabin and concluded he was shot twice in the back from medium range. In 1996, Rabin's hospital records were uncovered and over ten doctors and nurses signed very different accounts of Rabin's demise. He was actually shot three times, twice from point blank range and once frontally in the upper chest. On top of that, Rabin's spine was shattered and Hiss categorically reported that it wasn't. Because the patsy Yigal Amir never shot from point blank range or from the front, and because the assassination film proved Rabin's spine could not have been broken since he kept right on walking after the shot to his back, somebody must have asked Hiss to alter the medical facts. So he did and then the government's commission of inquiry into the murder adopted Hiss's lies as the official version of Rabin's death.

see www.barrychamish.com

Unknown said...

An interesting insight into the illegal activities of the Israeli government. It would appear that an International Jewish Mafia is in control and that Israel and Zionism are merely a cover for a gigantic and worldwide mob operation.

How nice... to own your own country where you and your mob can operate immune from law enforcement because you own the law.

Aiman

Unknown said...

Sir, I think the worldwide traffic in human organs is a huge problem and laud Nancy Scheper-Hughes and her work through Organ Watch. Thanks for bringing her to our attention. However as for the rest of the story, I must point your readers to some glaring discrepancies in your "reporting" You offer no substantiation from Hughes or any other reliable source that the a) Israeli government directed the operation of the "ring" or that b)this was a "theft" ring.
If you take the time to re-read the article about the trial in Brazil you will see it says that the Israeli government paid for the "opertions" not the "operation of the ring. All Israeli citizens are covered by a national health plan. If they travel to a foreign nation such as South Africa or the US or Turkey where the legal transplant operations take place they are covered by health insurance. By leaving out the "s" in the article you completely mis-characterized the role of Israel in this "operation" The fact that a retired Israeli officer was accused in Brazil of being an agent for the illegal sale of kidneys on the international black market does not make Israel a participant in the crime. (By the way in many Muslim countries such as Iraq and Iran, the sale of body parts is legal).
The reason the illegal sale of kidneys is a major problem in Israel is because there are so few donors. Until recently Jewish religious law put tight restrictions on the conditions for organ donorship. Jews consider the body to be created in God's image and should not be desecrated.
This forces terminally ill Israelis to go abroad for organ transplants. This has also created opportunities for operators to buy or sell body parts -- a worldwide problem as pointed out by Sheper-Hughes -- in many countries including China and India where the practices, according to her, are a horror.

In addition, you offer
no proof from Hughes or anyone else you cite that kidneys were stolen or taken at "gunpoint". There is no proof that the donors were not paid as agreed for their organs or their hospitalizations. Another distortion on your part is your reference to a 2001 news story about a Romanian government inquiry into adoptions of Romanian children in Israel. You state that Romania "accused an Israli adoption agency of being part of an..organ theft conpiracy". If you read the source you cited you will see that the Romanians had no evidence to believe that such
organ thefts took place but that they wanted a list of adoptions from the Israeli government, not the adoption agency, to see if such links could be established. There was never an accusation filed and no proof ever found that such links existed. They never accused the adoption agency or even investigated the adoption agency for illegal organ donorship. Yet you distort the article to make the reader believe the opposite. The article you quote as "evidence" makes references to a Romanian investigation of adoption practices in the US. In 2001 Romania was sending children abroad in record numbers for adoption. It became a huge political issue in Romania and the government sought to unwind these adoptions and force the return from the US, Israel and elsewhere Romanian children who had been adopted by foreigners. Our State Dept and Congress got involved to protect the families here but Romania put a stop to more legal adoptions by non-Romanians. The "kidney harvesting" allegation was a political ploy by the Romanian government to try to justify their actions. It turned out to be bogus.

I do not know what your agenda is, and I am not making any accusations
of political or religious bias, however
I urge your readers to thoroughly read your citations and judge for themselves if they support your conclusions and sensational headlines.

Joseph Cannon said...

My only "agenda" is the truth.

"You offer no substantiation from Hughes or any other reliable source that the a) Israeli government directed the operation of the "ring" or that b)this was a "theft" ring."

You didn't listen to Scheper-Hughes' radio interview, which was key. You also did not see the other articles on the net which quite her. The ring is international in scope and has been known to kidnap people off the street -- in Brazil and elsewhere.

Obviously, if the work were not illegal, it would never have come to court in Brazil, and the Brazilian version of the FBI would not have been involved. Scheper-Hughes is the one who provided information that lead to that case.

The point of the Brazilian piece -- which you so studiously ignored -- is that an Israeli officer pointed to Ilan Peri, and identified him as an Israeli government official. Previous stories linking Peri to the organ trade made him out to be a shady private operator.

In the cited radio interview, Scheper-Hughes said that Peri was the man in charge of the international operations of the ring, and that Rosenbaum answered to Peri.

Remember, it was Sheper-Hughes who first alerted our FBI to Rosenbaum.

The nature of Israeli health insurance is utterly irrelevant to the facts listed above. I wonder what YOUR agenda is in trying to sidetrack the discussion and in ignoring the key points that I made clear in my piece.


"In addition, you offer
no proof from Hughes or anyone else you cite that kidneys were stolen or taken at "gunpoint"."

That is precisely the argument made by her contact within the Rosenbaum organization. Since Scheper-Hughes had fingered Rosenbaum before anyone else -- remember, the feds learned about the guy from HER -- and since her information turned out to be right, I will presume that she has accurately characterized the information given to her by her informant. And I would not give out the name and address of that informant even if I had it, even though your (presumed) Mossad employers would very much like me to do so.

Sheper-Hughes also made clear that the Eastern Europeans were misinformed about the nature of the trip to America. And they were misinformed about the consequences.

Moreover, she has video evidence indicating the hospitals involved. The hospitals, on their web sites (which I checked) state that they do not allow kidney donations unless and until the donors have been interviewed and counseled. In other words, if she is right then those leading hospitals are guilty of criminal misrepresentation.

I could go on, answering the rest of your comment point by point, but I think everyone gets the picture by now. YOU are the one guilty of apologetic casuistry and highly selective citation of sources. And in my experience, no-one engages in that level of apologetic casuistry unless HE has an agenda.

Sherri Munnerlyn said...

Hi,

I have been engaged in discussions on this topic on forum discussion boards on Beliefnet, and I am encountering intense hostility from Isralei supporters who want to bury this story, and who do not want an investigation of these claims to be made.

I invite everyone to these discussion boards.

http://community.beliefnet.com/go/thread/view/59723/18801805/Are_rabbis_selling_Palestinian_human_organs?sdb=1&pg=last

http://community.beliefnet.com/go/thread/view/59723/18785427/Major_Swedish_Paper_Accuses_Israeli_Soldiers_Of_Abducting_KillingPalestinians_Stealing_TheirOrgans?num=10&pg=18

Sherri Munnerlyn