Tuesday 25 August 2009

Lebih Jauh Tentang Bisnis Ilegal Organ Manusia


Dalam sebuah film laris Turki berjudul "Valley of the Wolves" digambarkan seorang dokter Amerika berdarah yahudi di penjara Abu Ghraib Irak, membedah hidup-hidup seorang tawanan Irak. Kemudian ia membungkus beberapa organ dalam tawanan itu dan memasukkannya ke sebuah kendaraan yang bertuliskan: "Ke Tel Aviv (kota terbesar Israel)".

Fakta, bukan film fiksi, yang mirip dengan adegan film tersebut baru saja dirilis di sebuah surat kabar besar Swedia, Aftonbladet, tentang para pemuda Palestina yang diburu oleh tentara "paling bermoral di dunia" Israel untuk diambil organ dalamnya. Laporan tersebut menggemparkan masyarakat dunia yang masih memiliki moral dan mempunyai akses informasi tentunya.

Anda mungkin menganggap sepele berita tentang para rabbi yahudi di New Jersey dan New York yang ditangkap beberapa waktu lalu karena praktik perdagangan organ manusia. Anda mungkin juga hanya membaca sepintas karya sastrawan besar Shakespearre "Saudagar dari Venesia", tentang seorang rentenir yahudi yang meminta bayaran berupa sayatan daging korbannya yang tidak dapat membayar hutangnya. Tapi Anda tidak akan memandang sepele jika Anda masih memiliki hati nurani dan mengerti bahwa praktik-praktik biadab seperti itu telah berlangsung ribuan tahun dan masih terjadi saat ini di negeri "pilihan Tuhan", Israel.

Donald Boström, seorang fotografer Swedia yang menjalankan tugasnya di Tepi Barat Palestina tahun 1992, atas informasi dari beberapa personil keamanan PBB di sana mengikuti petualangan tentara Israel di Tepi Barat. Tentara-tentara tersebut menangkap beberapa pemuda Palestina dan mengembalikan jasadnya lima hari kemudian dalam kondisi tersayat dari perut hingga tenggorokan. Organ dalam jenasah-jenasah itu telah menghilang.

Para orang tua korban mengetahui dengan pasti apa yang dialami anak-anak mereka. "Anak-anak kami telah menjadi korban donor paksa. Mereka hilang selama beberapa hari untuk dikembalikan di tengah malam, dalam keadaan mati dan tersayat. Mengapa mereka membiarkan jenasah mereka selama lima hari sebelum kami dapat menguburkannya? Apa yang terjadi dengan jenazah-jenazah itu? Mengapa mereka melakukan autopsi, tanpa persetujuan kami, saat penyebab kematiannya sangat jelas? Mengapa jenasah mereka dikembalikan malam hari dengan pengawalan tentara? Mengapa seluruh area ditutup selama penyerahan jenasah dan aliran listrik dimatikan?"

Pertanyaan-pertanyaan itu terus menghantui Bostrom. Ia mengambil beberapa gambar jenasah tersebut kemudian menyelundupkannya keluar Tepi Barat. Setelah kembali ke Swedia ia menawarkan cerita mengerikan tersebut ke koran Dagens Nyheter yang ternyata dimiliki oleh keluarga Bonnier yang berdarah yahudi. Dagens Nyheter menolak mempublikasikan laporan tersebut, namun koran lainnya Aftonbladet, menerimanya. Laporan itu diterbitkan dua kali. Yang terakhir terbit tgl 23 Agustus lalu dengan judul headline di halaman muka "Mamma har aldlrig slutat lida, aldrig".

Israel menanggapi laporan itu dengan histeria massal. Mereka bersama kekuatan yahudi internasional menekan pemerintah Swedia untuk mengutuk laporan itu dan menangkap penulisnya untuk dipaksa meminta ma'af. Dubes Swedia di Israel, salah satu anggota keluarga Bonnier yang memiliki jaringan surat kabar, TV dan bioskop di Swedia, mengecam laporan tersebut dengan keras.

Namun untuk memenuhi harapan Israel tanpa mempermalukan Swedia sendiri tidaklah mungkin mengingat SWedia adalah negara penganut kebebasan berpendapat. Di sisi lain para redaktur Aftonbladet bersikukuh dengan hak mereka menyiarkan tamuan mereka dan menyerukan diadakannya penyidikan internasional atas kasus perdagangan organ ilegal tersebut.

Menlu Swedia Carl Bildt, atas tekanan yahudi internasional menulis di sebuah blog bahwa “artikel seperti itu akan mendorong anti-semitisme, dan provokasi bertentangan dengan hukum Swedia". Bagaimana pun karena reaksi pemerintah Swedia yang "lunak" menurut pandangan Israel, kemarahan justru semakin hebat di Israel.

Adalah mudah bagi Israel dan yahudi untuk menebarkan tuduhan-tuduhan kotor atas laporan jurnalisme itu, namun menjawabnya adalah persoalan lain. Fakta-fakta itu sangat mengganggu, dan tuduhan Israel menjadi pedagang ilegal organ manusia telah lama terdengar. Ada banyak laporan mengenai hal itu yang tidak dapat diabaikan begitu saja selain laporan dari Aftonbladet.

Anggota parlemen Israel dari etnis Arab Ahmed Tibi dan Hashem Mahmid pernah melontarkan tuduhan bahwa institut Abu Kabir yang menangani kedokteran forensik telah melakukan pengambilan organ-organ dalam mayat Palestina tanpa ijin keluarganya. Mereka mengatakan bahwa para dokter Palestina seringkali mengajukan protes karena mendapatkan mayat warga Palestina telah hilang organ dalamnya.

Sebuah media Israel juga pernah membuat laporan pada tahun 2007 lalu bahwa tiga remaja Palestina terbunuh di dekat kamp Khan Younes di Jalur Gaza, dan tubuhnya dikembalikan kepada keluarganya dalam kondisi hancur akibat otopsi, enam hari kemudian. Terkadang Israel bahkan sama sekali tidak mengembalikan mayat korbannya dan hanya menguburkannya diam-diam di suatu kuburan rahasia.

Berikut ini adalah berbagai laporan internasional tentang praktik-praktik otopsi dan perdagangan ilegal organ manusia yang dilakukan Israel.

* Turki, Jerussalem Post: Seorang profesor Israel, Zaki Shapira, ditangkap di Turki karena melakukan otopsi ilegal dan menjual organ-organ tubuh manusia. .
* Afrika Selatan, New York Times: Satu jaringan perdagangan organ manusia beroperasi antara Afrika Selatan hingga Brazil.

* Brazil: Seorang perwira tentara Israel, Gedalya Tauber, ditangkap karena memawarkan sejumlah uang kepada para warga miskin Brazil, untuk ditukar dengan organ tubuh.

* Ukraina, Jerusalem Post: seorang warga Israel ditangkap karena melakukan praktik jual-beli organ manusia di Ukraina.


Warga yahudi Israel banyak sekali terlibat dalam bisnis organ manusia karena Israel adalah negara satu-satunya di dunia yang turut terlibat langsung dalam
bisnis ini, selain juga melegalkan kegiatan ini dilakukan. Dan karena banyaknya komunitas yahudi, banyaknya doktor keturunan yahudi di berbagai negara yang sama-sama memiliki moral yang rendah, kegiatan ini menjadi sebuah jaringan internasional.

Moral yang rendah ini ditunjukkan oleh koran Israel, The Marker, yang pernah memuat opini seorang pengacara Israel tentang bisnis ini. "Organ hanya sekedar komoditi, maka bisa dibeli dan dijual di pasar terbuka sebagaimana komoditi lainnya," tulis opini tersebut.

Namun moral yang rendah tersebut ternyata telah mendapat justifikasi agama karena kitab Talmud membolehkan praktik-praktik tersebut. Seorang rabbi terkemuka Israel, Yitzhak Ginzburg, dalam kotbahnya pernah mengatakan, "seorang yahudi berhak mengambil jantung goyim (binatang ternak, maksudnya non yahudi) jika memerlukannya. Karena kehidupan seorang yahudi jauh lebih berharga daripada kehidupan goyim sebagaimana hidup seorang goyim lebih berharga dibandingkan kehidupan binatang."

Perbedaan antara organ yang dibeli atau dirampas tidak banyak berarti dalam hal ini. Jika organ manusia hanyalah komoditi, maka tentu boleh saja mengambilnya dari orang-orang Palestina, sama seperti bolehnya merampas rumah dan pohon olive berusia ratusan tahun ataupun pohon citrus milik orang-orang Palestina.

Provokasi sebagaimana ditutuhkan menlu Swedia Carl Bildt adalah mudah, namun tidak mudah bagi moron (lebih bodoh dari idiot) seperti Carl Bildt, untuk melihat bahwa Israel, yang tidak segan-segan meremukkan tulang tangan dan kaki orang Palestina, menumpahkan bom napalm di taman kanak-kanak Palestina, atau menembaki binatang di dalam kerangkeng kebun binatang Kota Gaza, merampas organ dalam pemuda-pemuda Palestina untuk sekeping uang. Tuntutan Aftonbladet untuk diadakannya penyidikan internasional sangatlah beralasan: jika Israel tidak merasa bersalah dengan membunuhi ribuan orang Palestina, mereka semestinya tidak merasa takut menghadapi penyidikan internasional. Namun kenyataannya Israel bahkan menolak mengijinkan tim penyidik internasional untuk melakukan penyidikan atas Tragedi Jenin tahun 2002 dan Gaza (2009) dimana ribuan rakyat Palestina dibunuh secara keji oleh Israel.

Yang ditakuti Israel sebenarnya adalah munculnya kesadaran massal masyarakat dunia untuk menghentikan dominasi yahudi. Orang-orang yahudi menguasai sebagian besar media massa besar di dunia bukan untuk kesenangan maupun profit semata, namun untuk mempengaruhi opini publik. Ini juga terjadi di Swedia (dan jangan naif dengan berfikir mereka tidak melakukannya di Indonesia) dimana mereka menguasai jaringan surat kabar, majalah, penerbitan, bahkan industri film. Media massa ini secara aktif mempromosikan agenda-agenda yahudi: persamaan ras (untuk membuat ras-ras lain lemah), neo liberalisme, komodifikasi, imigrasi, menghancurkan kemakmuran negara demi kekayaan orang-orang yahudi.

Israel dan Yahudi bekerja keras agar semua berita mengenai konflik timur tengah berada dalam kontrol mereka. Beberapa tahun lalu koran independen Swedia, Ordfront, membuat laporan yang mengejutkan publik Swedia yang tidak pernah berfikir orang-orang Yahudi mengontrol media massa mereka dan selama bergenerasi-generasi membentuk pola pikir mereka. Ordfront, melaporkan bagaiman para pejabat Israel mendatangi beberapa kantor surat kabar di Swedia, bertemu dengan para editor dan wartawan menginstruksikan ini dan itu.

Kegagalan Israel dan yahudi menghentikan publikasi praktik perdagangan ilegal organ manusia yang didahului dengan panangkapan para rabbi Amerika, penghargaan kepada Mary Robinson, Desmond Tutu, dan Felicia Langer (tokoh-tokoh yang dituduh anti-semit), munculnya partai anti zionisme di Perancis, serta fenomena runtuhnya partai-partai sosialis pro yahudi di Eropa merupakan tanda-tanda perubahan. Rakyat Swedia, Perancis, Jerman, dan bahkan Amerika tidak lagi takut pada pengaruh yahudi. Bahkan Presiden Amerika Barack Obama berani membuka kontak diplomatik dengan musuh Israel, Iran, serta konsisten menuntut Israel menghentikan pembangunan pemukiman di Tepi Barat.

Transplantasi organ manusia merupakan kejahatan yang sangat keji, mendekati kanibalisme. Kejahtan ini harus dihentikan karena tubuh manusia adalah suci. Tidak ada artinya hidup lebih lama dengan organ yang dirampas dari orang lain dengan biaya yang mahal, sementara biayanya bisa digunakan untuk mengurangi kelaparan dan kemiskinan.


Inilah laporan yang dibuat Donald Bostrom yang dimuat di koran besar Swedia, Aftonbladet, baru-baru ini.


Our sons plundered for their organs
By Donald Boström

You could call me a “matchmaker,” said Levy Yitzhak Rosenbaum, from Brooklyn, USA, in a secret recording with an FBI-agent whom he believed to be a client. Ten days later, at the end of July this year, Rosenbaum was arrested and a vast, Sopranos-like, imbroglio of money-laundering and illegal organ-trade was revealed. Rosenbaum’s matchmaking had nothing to do with romance. It was all about buying and selling kidneys from Israel on the black market. Rosenbaum says that he buys the kidneys for 10,000 dollars, from poor people. He then proceeds to sell the organs to desperate patients in the States for 160,000 dollars. The accusations have shaken the American transplantation business. If they are true it means that organ trafficking is documented for the first time in the US, experts tell the New Jersey Real-Time News.

On the question of how many organs he has sold Rosenbaum replies: “Quite a lot. And I have never failed,” he boasts. The business has been running for quite some time. Francis Delmonici, professor of transplant surgery at Harvard and member of the National Kidney Foundation’s Board of Directors, tells the same newspaper that organ-trafficking, similar to the one reported from Israel, is carried out in other places of the world as well. 5-6,000 operations a year, about ten per cent of the world’s kidney transplants are carried out illegally, according to Delmonici.

Countries suspected of these activities are Pakistan, the Philippines and China, where the organs are allegedly taken from executed prisoners. But Palestinians also harbor strong suspicions against Israel for seizing young men and having them serve as the country’s organ reserve - a very serious accusation, with enough question marks to motivate the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to start an investigation about possible war crimes.

Israel has repeatedly been under fire for its unethical ways of dealing with organs and transplants. France was among the countries that ceased organ collaboration with Israel in the nineties. Jerusalem Post wrote that “the rest of the European countries are expected to follow France’s example shortly.”

Half of the kidneys transplanted to Israelis since the beginning of the 2000s have been bought illegally from Turkey, Eastern Europe or Latin America. Israeli health authorities have full knowledge of this business but do nothing to stop it. At a conference in 2003 it was shown that Israel is the only western country with a medical profession that doesn’t condemn the illegal organ trade. The country takes no legal measures against doctors participating in the illegal business - on the contrary, chief medical officers of Israel’s big hospitals are involved in most of the illegal transplants, according to Dagens Nyheter (December 5, 2003).

In the summer of 1992, Ehud Olmert, then minister of health, tried to address the issue of organ shortage by launching a big campaign aimed at having the Israeli public register for postmortal organ donation. Half a million pamphlets were spread in local newspapers. Ehud Olmert himself was the first person to sign up. A couple of weeks later the Jerusalem Post reported that the campaign was a success. No fewer than 35,000 people had signed up. Prior to the campaign it would have been 500 in a normal month. In the same article, however, Judy Siegel, the reporter, wrote that the gap between supply and demand was still large. 500 people were in line for a kidney transplant, but only 124 transplants could be performed. Of 45 people in need of a new liver, only three could be operated on in Israel.

While the campaign was running, young Palestinian men started to disappear from villages in the West Bank and Gaza. After five days Israeli soldiers would bring them back dead, with their bodies ripped open.

Talk of the bodies terrified the population of the occupied territories. There were rumors of a dramatic increase of young men disappearing, with ensuing nightly funerals of autopsied bodies.

I was in the area at the time, working on a book. On several occasions I was approached by UN staff concerned about the developments. The persons contacting me said that organ theft definitely occurred but that they were prevented from doing anything about it. On an assignment from a broadcasting network I then travelled around interviewing a great number of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza - meeting parents who told of how their sons had been deprived of organs before being killed. One example that I encountered on this eerie trip was the young stone-thrower Bilal Ahmed Ghanan.

It was close to midnight when the motor roar from an Israeli military column sounded from the outskirts of Imatin, a small village in the northern parts of the West Bank. The two thousand inhabitants were awake. They were still, waiting, like silent shadows in the dark, some lying upon roofs, others hiding behind curtains, walls, or trees that provided protection during the curfew but still offered a full view toward what would become the grave for the first martyr of the village. The military had interrupted the electricity and the area was now a closed-off military zone - not even a cat could move outdoors without risking its life. The overpowering silence of the dark night was only interrupted by quiet sobbing. I don’t remember if our shivering was due to the cold or to the tension. Five days earlier, on May 13, 1992, an Israeli special force had used the village’s carpentry workshop for an ambush. The person they were assigned to put out of action was Bilal Ahmed Ghanan, one of the stone-throwing Palestinian youngsters who made life difficult for the Israeli soldiers.

As one of the leading stone-throwers Bilal Ghanan had been wanted by the military for a couple of years. Together with other stone-throwing boys he hid in the Nablus mountains, with no roof over his head. Getting caught meant torture and death for these boys - they had to stay in the mountains at all costs.

On May 13 Bilal made an exception, when for some reason, he walked unprotected by the carpentry workshop. Not even Talal, his older brother, knows why he took this risk. Maybe the boys were out of food and needed to restock.

Everything went according to plan for the Israeli special force. The soldiers stubbed their cigarettes, put away their cans of Coca-Cola, and calmly aimed through the broken window. When Bilal was close enough they needed only to pull the triggers. The first shot hit him in the chest. According to villagers who witnessed the incident he was subsequently shot with one bullet in each leg. Two soldiers then ran down from the carpentry workshop and shot Bilal once in the stomach. Finally, they grabbed him by his feet and dragged him up the twenty stone steps of the workshop stair. Villagers say that people from both the UN and the Red Crescent were close by, heard the discharge and came to look for wounded people in need of care. Some arguing took place as to who should take care of the victim. Discussions ended with Israeli soldiers loading the badly wounded Bilal in a jeep and driving him to the outskirts of the village, where a military helicopter waited. The boy was flown to a destination unknown to his family. Five days later he came back, dead and wrapped in green hospital fabric.

A villager recognized Captain Yahya, the leader of the military column who had transported Bilal from the postmortem center Abu Kabir, outside of Tel Aviv, to the place for his final rest. “Captain Yahya is the worst of them all,” the villager whispered in my ear. After Yahya had unloaded the body and changed the green fabric for a light cotton one, some male relatives of the victim were chosen by the soldiers to do the job of digging and mixing cement.

Together with the sharp noises from the shovels we could hear laughter from the soldiers who, as they waited to go home, exchanged some jokes. As Bilal was put in the grave his chest was uncovered. Suddenly it became clear to the few people present just what kind of abuse the boy had been exposed to. Bilal was not by far the first young Palestinian to be buried with a slit from his abdomen up to his chin.

The families in the West Bank and in Gaza felt that they knew exactly what had happened: “Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,” relatives of Khaled from Nablus told me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin and the uncles of Mahmud and Nafes from Gaza, who had all disappeared for a number of days only to return at night, dead and autopsied.

- Why are they keeping the bodies for up to five days before they let us bury them? What happened to the bodies during that time? Why are they performing autopsy, against our will, when the cause of death is obvious? Why are the bodies returned at night? Why is it done with a military escort? Why is the area closed off during the funeral? Why is the electricity interrupted? Nafes’s uncle was upset and he had a lot of questions.

The relatives of the dead Palestinians no longer harbored any doubts as to the reasons for the killings, but the spokesperson for the Israeli army claimed that the allegations of organ theft were lies. All the Palestinian victims go through autopsy on a routine basis, he said. Bilal Ahmed Ghanem was one of 133 Palestinians killed in various ways that year. According to the Palestinian statistics the causes of death were: shot in the street, explosion, tear gas, deliberately run over, hanged in prison, shot in school, killed at home et cetera. The 133 people killed were between four months to 88 years old. Only half of them, 69 victims, went through postmortem examination. The routine autopsy of killed Palestinians - of which the army spokesperson was talking - has no bearing on the reality in the occupied territories. The questions remain.

We know that Israel has a great need for organs, that there is a vast and illegal trade of organs which has been running for many years now, that the authorities are aware of it and that doctors in managing positions at the big hospitals participate, as well as civil servants at various levels. We also know that young Palestinian men disappeared, that they were brought back after five days, at night, under tremendous secrecy, stitched back together after having been cut from abdomen to chin.

It’s time to bring clarity to this macabre business, to shed light on what is going on and what has taken place in the territories occupied by Israel since the Intifada began.

Donald Boström

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