Imprisoned terrorists are “guinea pigs for Israeli medical experiments” and victims of “organ theft” claims Fatah official
Fatah Prisoners’ Commission Representative Majdi Salem: “The prisoners have become guinea pigs for the Israeli medicines and medicinal drugs. Approximately 15,000 medical experiments with medicines and medicinal drugs were conducted on the Palestinian prisoners, not to mention the prisoners and Martyrs in the numbered cemeteries and organ theft from the prisoners and the bodies.”
[Official PA TV, Talk of the Hour, Sept. 1, 2022]
Libel on medical abuse of Palestinian prisoners - the PA claims that Israel abuses Palestinian prisoners through medical neglect, medical experiments, and by intentionally infecting them with diseases. However, the International Red Cross regularly visits these prisoners and has not documented or accused Israel of any of these claims. Likewise, lists of demands occasionally issued by the prisoners during hunger strikes - such as during one in 2011 - include no demands relating to these claims. PMW has documented prisoners talking about how they "lack nothing" in the prisons, and that "the worst thing about Israeli prison" is riding in a prison vehicle that has no padding on the seat. When PMW contacted the Israeli Ministry of Health in 2007 regarding PA claims of medical experiments on prisoners, the ministry responded: "Clinical testing on prisoners in prison was never approved, never performed, and is most certainly not taking place at present."
The Cemeteries for Enemy Casualties (numbered cemeteries) are two burial sites maintained by the Israeli army for burying the bodies of enemy soldiers during wartime as well as terrorists. They are fenced and well-marked. Graves have markers instead of gravestones. Burial is temporary, as the bodies are eventually returned to their countries of origin. No ceremony is held. The bodies are buried in numbered caskets after their identities are documented.
Organ theft - Acting Director-General of the PA Ministry of Justice’s Forensic Medicine Administration Dr. Ashraf Al-Qadi has refuted the PA libel that Israel steals organs from dead Palestinians: “All the Martyrs we have checked and seen, none of them had any theft of their organs. I don’t know about the Martyrs from before, whom we did not check as a Palestinian side or authority.” [Official PA TV, Good Morning Jerusalem, March 11, 2022]
Like other PA libels, this libel contains a grain of truth that the PA has distorted into a lie.
In 2001, an Israeli investigative journalist exposed that from the years 1988 to 2000, in violation of Israeli law, doctors at the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine had taken body parts for research and transplants of skin and corneas without permission from the relatives. Most body parts were taken from Israeli Jews, but also from Israeli Arabs, Israeli soldiers and Palestinian terrorists. At the time, the institute was run by Professor Yehuda Hiss who was personally involved in the scandal. Hiss was removed from his position as director but remained as chief pathologist until later investigations uncovered that he had continued his misconduct, which led to his dismissal from the Institute by the Ministry of Health in May 2012. There has been no documented case of Israeli organ theft since then.