Authorities in Gaza have confirmed that the Israeli occupation forces stole body parts from killed Palestinians during the two-year genocidal war on the besieged territory.
After Israel recently returned 120 mutilated bodies of Palestinian abductees as part of the ceasefire that took effect on October 10, medical examinations revealed that the occupying forces had removed organs from several, including corneas, kidneys, and livers.
According to the Gaza Media Office, the bodies arrived in deplorable condition – many blindfolded, bound, hanged, shot at close range, or showing signs of prolonged torture leading to death.
Some were returned without heads, limbs, or internal organs, while others were melted or unrecognisable.
Forensic teams in Gaza also documented clear tank-track imprints on several of the returned bodies, suggesting that some victims had been crushed under military vehicles.
Dr. Ismail al-Thawabta, Director General of the Media Office, said in a live broadcast last Friday that these findings strongly indicate systematic organ harvesting by Israeli occupation forces – crimes that must be documented and presented before international courts.
‘These bodies arrived in extremely poor and distressing condition. The Israeli occupation executed many of them in cold blood. A large number were found blindfolded, with their hands and feet bound, and others showed signs of hanging or close-range gunfire,’ al-Thawabta said.
‘We also found bodies showing clear evidence of severe torture until death.’
He said the Gaza media office holds the Israeli army responsible for stealing organs and is calling for an international investigation into the regime’s ‘torture, mutilation, and organ theft.’
The official added that Israeli authorities refused to provide the names of the victims, making it extremely difficult for Gaza’s forensic teams to identify them.
After the release of the bodies, families of missing Palestinians rushed to hospitals – especially Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza – in hopes of recognising their relatives.
Many, however, remain unidentified and will have to be buried anonymously.
‘The health system in Gaza is almost completely collapsed. We lack the equipment for DNA testing and forensic analysis. Some families could only identify their loved ones from personal belongings or clothing. If we cannot identify the rest, we will be forced, sadly, to document and bury them anonymously, to preserve human dignity,’ Thawabta noted.
According to data from the Media Office, around 9,500 Palestinians remain missing – most of them trapped beneath the rubble of destroyed buildings.
‘Entire families – father, mother, children – remain buried for nearly two years,’ Thawabta said, noting that Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s heavy machinery, bulldozers, and excavators has made rescue operations nearly impossible.
‘Even now, despite the ceasefire, all crossings remain closed, and Israel blocks the entry of rescue machinery. This is a humanitarian catastrophe unprecedented in modern history – over 3,000 families completely wiped out, another 6,000 families killed with only one survivor,’ he added.
Two years since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, the territory lies in ruins – its people trapped between devastation and starvation.
Over 76,000 Palestinians, including more than 20,000 children and 12,500 women, have been killed or remain missing.
Israel has dropped more than 200,000 tons of explosives – equal to thirteen Hiroshima bombs – destroying 95 per cent of schools, 38 hospitals, 96 health centres, and nearly 270,000 homes.
Farmland and fisheries have also been completely wiped out, pushing 650,000 children toward starvation and leaving half a million people in famine-like conditions.
Millions of Palestinians have been displaced, many multiple times, as Israel continues forced relocations under the guise of ‘evacuation’.
Revelations that Israel has harvested organs from Palestinian abductees and victims of war for use in the international organ trade have persisted for decades.
These findings extend beyond wartime, suggesting a disturbing commodification of Palestinian bodies even in times of relative calm – further underscoring the pattern of gross rights abuses.
Part of the background lies in religious and cultural factors: some Orthodox Jewish communities reject organ donation, believing that a brain-dead person is still alive, experts say.
As a result, organ-donation rates in Israeli-occupied territories remain low. While around 30 per cent of people in Western countries hold organ-donor cards, the figure in Israel reportedly hovers near 14 per cent – a disparity activists say has fuelled unethical sourcing of organs from Palestinians.
In 1996, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh, an influential leader within the Zionist terrorist outfit, Chabad-Lubavitch, made controversial remarks, claiming that organ theft from non-Jews could be justified on the basis that Jewish lives hold greater religious value.
‘If a Jew needs a liver,’ he asked, ‘can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that. Jewish life has infinite value. There is something infinitely more holy and unique about Jewish life than non-Jewish life.’
The first major reports of organ trafficking linked to Israel surfaced during the First Palestinian Intifada in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In 1990, Dr. Hatem Abu Ghazaleh, former chief health official for the occupied West Bank, stated that during the first intifada, ‘organs, especially eyes and kidneys, were removed from the bodies during the first year or year and a half.’
Further evidence emerged in 2009 when Swedish journalist Donald Boström published an investigative piece in Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet titled ‘Our sons are plundered of their organs’ (original Swedish: Våra söner blir plundrade på sina organ).
The report detailed testimonies from Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza who said their sons had been abducted, held in secret, autopsied and returned to their families with major body incisions indicating organ theft.
Hundreds of bodies of Palestinians killed since 2015 have been kept by the Israeli regime in morgue fridges. Worse, it not only holds the remains of slain Palestinians but also harvests their organs.
One cited case was that of Bilal Achmed Ghanan, a young Palestinian stone-thrower who was shot, abducted by the Israeli regime, and returned dead five days later with a slit running from abdomen to chin. Relatives said: ‘Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors.’
Boström connected these accounts to a broader network of illegal organ trafficking in which Israel had been implicated.
He cited the 2009 arrest of Levy Izhak Rosenbaum in New Jersey, who admitted to running a large-scale operation buying and selling human kidneys.
Boström also highlighted criticism of Israeli medical authorities for turning a blind eye to such crimes and failing to hold perpetrators accountable.
According to the report, Israel’s transplant system has long been carrying out or supporting illegal transplants using organs obtained from foreign or coerced ‘donors’.
Israel itself later admitted that its Abu Kabir Forensic Institute systematically harvested organs – including corneas, skin, bones, and heart valves – from bodies without family consent throughout the 1990s.
The admission came after an interview with Dr. Jehuda Hiss, the institute’s then-director, was made public.
Hiss admitted in a July 2000 interview with US academic Nancy Scheper-Hughes that the institute was secretly taking skin, bones, cardiac valves, corneas, and other human materials from bodies of Palestinians and foreign workers during autopsies.
‘Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family,’ he said, describing how pathologists would glue eyelids shut to hide missing corneas.
Although the Israeli military confirmed the practice, it claimed the procedure had ‘ended a decade ago’.
Despite clear evidence of organ theft, Hiss was never prosecuted and continued working at the institute, reflecting Israel’s pattern of impunity in cases of abuse against Palestinians.
In her 2002 book Over Their Dead Bodies, Israeli physician Meira Weiss provided details of the systematic harvesting of organs from dead Palestinians between 1996 and 2002 for use in medical research at Israeli universities and transplant.
A 2008 CNN investigation identified Israel as one of the largest hubs in the global illegal trade in human organs.
In 2014, an Israeli television report featured confessions by high-ranking officials that skin from the bodies of dead Palestinians and African workers had been used to treat Israeli burn victims.
The director of Israel’s Skin Bank revealed that the occupying regime’s reserve of ‘human skin’ had reached an extraordinary 17 square metres – disproportionately large for its population.
Israel has also long faced criticism as a destination for organ-transplant tourism.
A 2015 European Parliament report titled Trafficking in Human Organs listed Israel as a key importer and consumer in the trade and noted its refusal to sign the 2008 Istanbul Declaration aimed at combating organ trafficking.
The 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which Israel has not ratified, requires combatants to respect the dignity of the dead, including preventing despoiling, mutilation, or any disrespectful treatment of their bodies.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based rights organisation, raised alarms in November 2023 – just over a month into Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza – over ‘organ theft’ by Israeli forces from dead Palestinians.
It followed reports by medical professionals in Gaza who examined some bodies after Israel released them.
The group said it had documented Israeli forces confiscating dozens of bodies from al-Shifa and Indonesian hospitals in northern Gaza, as well as others in the south.
Medical professionals who examined released bodies found missing livers, kidneys, hearts, cochleas, and corneas – findings the organisation said were ‘evidence’ of organ theft.
Euro-Med called for an independent international investigation into the matter, asserting that Israel remains one of the ‘world’s biggest hubs for the illegal trade of human organs under the pretext of “security deterrence”.’
Further reports noted that Google searches related to organ transplants in hospitals in Israeli-occupied territories spiked across the United States following the start of the genocidal war on October 7, 2023.
Google Trends data showed that searches for terms such as ‘kidney in Israel’ and for hospitals including Sheba Medical Centre, Soroka Medical Centre, and Rambam Health Campus rose from a score of 0 to 100 that month – while hospitals without transplant units, such as Lis Maternity and Assuta Hospital, showed no increase.
Human-rights groups say that the Tel Aviv authorities must be investigated and prosecuted for additional war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the theft of organs.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has jurisdiction over such crimes. Although Israel is not a party to the ICC, Palestine’s membership could provide the legal grounds necessary for proceedings.
Recurring reports of desecration, mutilation, and organ theft not only raise grave humanitarian concerns but also underscore what activists denounce as Israel’s persistent lack of accountability in Gaza’s ongoing tragedy.
