Aftonbladet Ignores Bedouin-Egyptian Organ Trafficking

Aftonbladet is infamous for running a highly sensational and totally fictional account of alleged Israeli trafficking in organs from dead Palestinians. But somehow, the investigative powers of its reporting staff have failed to detect a real and lethal organ-snatching industry which is operating in Egypt. The victims are African refugees fleeing persecution in their home countries and hoping to get to Israel.

photo credit: CNN

Accounts of organ trafficking, confirmed by a number of sources, began to hit the mass media last week. In fact the story was known over a year ago. In a report released in June 2010 by the Israeli NGO Kav Laoved an African woman refugee reported this incident:


-“the Bedouins hurt and threatened to kill [13 individuals] if their families didn't send more money. Those among them who were unable to obtain more money were killed by the Bedouins and their organs were sold.”
Workers from Kav Laoved learned of this case in March of 2010. But Aftonbladet’s staff, which was so quick to accuse Israel with no real evidence, has yet to move on this story which is full of facts and murdered victims.
The story, which is now being treated as a freshly breaking story, was reported in detail by CNN in a Freedom Project Report and other media outlets. For at least several years, African refugees fleeing to Israel who fail to pay Bedouin human traffickers in the Sinai are drugged, their kidneys, liver and other “harvestable” parts are taken, and the bodies are dumped. CNN reports that two Italian NGOs:


“presented evidence that the bodies of African refugees have been found in the Sinai desert with organs missing…refugees -- from places like Ethiopia, Eritrea or Sudan -- are enslaved and tortured and the women raped if they cannot come up with the large sums of money the Bedouin try to extort from them and their families to smuggle them into Israel.”


Evidence indicates that these organs are being purchased for the Egyptian transplant market. Italian NGO worker Hamdy Al-Azazy has graphic photos which he says were taken in a morgue in El Arish. They show the kind of incisions which would typify surgery, not autopsy. Al-Azazy describes the procedure:


"Mobile clinics using advanced technology come from a private hospital in Cairo to an area in the deserts of Mid-Sinai and conduct physicals on the Africans before they choose those suitable, then they conduct the operation."


CNN also reports that the World Health Organization has cited Egypt as hub for the illegal organs trade. Organ trafficking is second only to arms trading in profitability, followed by drugs and prostitution trafficking, all of which are also Bedouin enterprises. Organs are sold for $20,000 and up to Egyptian doctors who work directly with the Bedouins. The police claim to be aware of the organ trafficking, but ignorant regarding the identity of the perpetrators. Sources have identified the Sawarka tribe as key operators in the illegal trafficking of human parts. It is hard to believe that NGOs and reporters would have more information than the Egyptian authorities. Putting two and two together probably means that transplants are profitable business for Egypt. Either the government turns a blind eye or certain people are getting kickbacks.


No conjecture is needed to see why Aftonbladet would ignore the story—a case where there is murderous brutality on the part of Muslims who also supply weapons to Gaza is a story the staff at Aftonbladet could never stomach.






By Chanah Shapira

Lawless & Burning in Southern Sweden

Thanks to the Tundra Tabloids for this video of a mall and surrounding area up in flames in the southern town of Kalmar. Arson has become part of the landscape in southern Sweden, but this is certainly a big step up from the usual "car-b-que" typical in Malmö. 

by Chanah Shapira

Catch-up: Aftonbladet Reports on Terrorist Funding

Cash for terror spills blood,
not ketchup

At the very end of August, the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published an article on Swedish aid to the Palestinian Authority which, surprisingly, pointed out problems with the endpoint receivers. Specifically, the article actually reported that the Palestinian Authority (PA) pays salaries to jailed terrorists, and that this is an essential component of continued terror recruiting.

Highlighting the top-level recipient Hassan Salameh, a headline statement points out that:

-“Salameh, gets a monthly salary of SEK 10,800 (about $1570), although he was sentenced to 37 life sentences in 1996 for leading the terrorist attacks that killed 46 people.”

The sub headline, “Millions in aid salary to terrorists”, is followed by concrete data regarding terrorist support funding. The total amount of the most recent Swedish Aid package (SEK 40 million or over $5.8 million) more than comfortably covers the PA “jail salaries”—which  total SEK 31 million (about 4.5 million).
  

Donor monies help the PA to pay hundreds of prisoners so that crime—in this case the brutal murder and maiming of Israeli citizens—does pay. Potential terrorists know that if they are caught and sit in jail their families will not lose financial support. (Not mentioned in the article is that the Israeli prison system also offers the opportunity to get high school or university degrees.)

Aid from Sweden and other donor states clearly supports and rewards terror. There is also a severe problem with the lack of transparency, as donors have no idea where the money goes once it’s handed over.  Anna Brodin, a spokesperson from the government’s Palestinian aid office, admitted that there are payments to imprisoned terrorists, but preferred to refer to them as “grants”. Nonetheless, she stated:

-“It's impossible to control exactly where all of their expenses goes to, but we can control is that our money is right.”

Minister for International Development, Gunilla Carlsson (Moderate Party), is using the same logic; her press secretary remarked:

-“It’s not our money that falls into the wrong hands, but then it is clear that there are gaps.”

This kind of “I didn’t do it” logic is no more than posturing, and totally fails to admit responsibility for fueling the whole PA rejectionist machine. The PA funds terrorists and also glorifies them by naming streets and public squares after cruel murderers, while refusing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Yet the donor states that line the pockets of the PA never call it to account.

Carlsson should be ashamed these pathetic statements; the Development Ministry should demand better accounting or better yet, turn off the cash flow to the PA.

By Chanah Shapira

Community Security: Better Late than Never

Secure Holidays at last?

At the beginning of September—and at long last, the Swedish government finally decided that the Jewish community in Malmö would receive funds in order to strengthen security around Malmö’s only synagogue. Due to international pressure, the authorities allocated funding, but only two years after reports that Jews have been leaving the city due to frequent occurrences of anti-Semitic hate crimes.

According to sources cited by the Forward:

-“ The government’s decision to allocate money for heightened security came after the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe called upon Sweden to do more to combat anti-Semitism. With 56 participating member states, OSCE is the world’s largest regional security organization.”

The back story is that the Simon Wiesenthal Center opened the issue with the OSCE as we reported in March of this year. SWC representatives visited Malmö and sharply criticized Malmö’s mayor, Ilmar Reepalu (Social Democrat), for failing to tackle the problems of growing anti-Semitism.  Reepalu has consistently and hatefully blamed Malmö’s Jewish community for the acts of anti-Semitic violence it suffers, while allowing lawless elements among the immigrant Muslim community to wreak havoc in the city.

Belatedly, the foot-dragging Immigration Minister Erik Ullenhag (Liberal Party) has said it is “totally unacceptable” that Jews on their way to synagogue are regularly subjected to verbal abuse and physical threats. Previously Ullenhag made statements which compared Jewish support for Israel with Muslim links to the September 11^th terror attacks, calling these the causes of hate crime in Malmö. He also advocated using school education programs to solve the issue of street attacks against Jews—a “too little, too late” approach.

Reports state that the Swedish government’s recently-released fall budget contains 4 million kronor ($622,000) to boost the synagogue security. This funding helps enable Malmö’s 658 Jews to visit the synagogue during the holidays in greater security, in light of violent incidents targeting Malmö’s Jewish community.  It also helps the small community to cover the very heavy cost of security arrangements—previously, the city and national authorities refused to provide any security assistance to the beleaguered community. As a result, Malmö’s Jewish citizens paid heavily for security out of their own pockets.

The new funds reportedly will be used to add police presence around the synagogue premises and also for camera surveillance to avoid the attempted arson and similar attacks which have continued during the past two years. If this is the case, we welcome the reversal of the Malmö police refusal to allow cameras as part of the Jewish community’s essential security. As SWC previously stated:

-“During our one week fact-finding mission, we met with Jewish, Muslim and Roma leaders who all concurred that the municipality, the police and the State were obfuscating their responsibility to protect their citizens. Even security camera permits, for community institutions at risk, have been denied as a violation of privacy.”  

It is good news that the Jewish community has finally received state funds to help keep its members secure as they exercise their freedom to practice their religion. Providing for its citizens’ security is what governments are supposed to do.  Sadly, Swedish authorities require outside pressure to provide security for their own citizens. We’re pleased that they are finally acting, but wouldn’t it be better if authorities tackled the real issues so that special funds for Jewish security would be unnecessary?

 By Sara, with Chanah Shapira

Swedish Hate Crime & Twisted Statistics

An article this week in the Local reported on increasing rates of hate crime in Sweden. Citing a confusing number of statistics and studies, the article attempted to compare rising rates of anti-Semitic hate crimes with one of European liberals’ major concerns, Islamophobia.   According to the article, one might infer that these two issues are problems created by European xenophobia. Furthermore, one might also assume that these are the only minority groups in Sweden, which is untrue.

The article also completely failed to point out that most physical anti-Semitic hate crime in Sweden is perpetrated by Muslims. Readers of this blog will also recall that the Swedish authorities, especially Malmö’s mayor and government-supported media (Aftonbladet is a prime example) have repeatedly stirred up hostilities against the Jewish population. Remarks made by Mayor Ilmar Reepalu can be described—at best—as examples of bigotry, and have often crossed the line into verbal hate crime. In Sweden, the left-leaning media’s reporting on Israel is notoriously biased.  Swedish Jews in general are often demonized along with the Israeli government.

As the article notes, hate crime statistics are underreported in Sweden. In Malmö the police are reluctant to investigate or record anti-Semitic attacks, as the Chabad rabbi in Malmö has attested.

When numbers of Muslims are guilty of hate crimes, placing anti-Semitism and Islamophobia on equal footing smacks of the kind of whitewashing and denial common in Sweden. A simple comparison of the reported numbers of hate crime incidents shows that Jews are more than ten times more likely than Muslims to suffer from hate crimes.

Although Sweden would like to portray itself as an open and fair society, its integration policies can be described as abject failures, since many Muslim immigrants barely speak Swedish, have high drop-out rates from school, 80% unemployment, and live in poverty on government handouts.

No wonder the most telling statistic in the article reads as follows:

-“When American research centre Pew recently investigated the development of religious conflicts and oppression worldwide between 2006 and 2009, Sweden distinguished itself as a country where hostilities related to religion are increasing the most.”

Swedish intolerance isn’t defined merely by the number of hate sites on the Internet. It’s about public officials and journalists who are not held accountable for slurs and blood libels, and police failure to pursue those guilty of hate crimes. Warehousing immigrants in slums where they have no hope of integrating into Western society, and are encouraged in their prejudices only adds violent actors to stage already set for intolerance.

By Chanah Shapira

Who is the Real Aggressor?

One hundred Grad missiles, mortar shells and Kassam rockets were fired towards Israeli major cities and populated areas on August 20th. One person was killed, and ten civilians were injured, including two children and a baby.

The latest round of terror attacks perpetrated by Palestinians against Israelis started with combined terror attacks on civilian busses and family cars near the city of Eilat on August 18th. These coordinated terror operations killed eight Israelis, including all occupants of a family car which was struck by an anti-tank missile.

Residents of Israel's southern cities--Beer Sheva, Ofakim and the coastal towns of Ashkelon and Ashdod are on constant alert and are prepared to take cover in bomb shelters and enforced structures.

Yesterday Israel opened its borders with Gaza to allow passage for wounded Palestianian civilians into Israel. Famous American actor John Voight visited hospitals in Israel today and was surprised to see Palestinians being treated alongside Israelis in the emergency ward.

However, despite today's declared truce, two Kassam rockets have hit near Ashkelon in the last few hours fired from the Gaza strip. Firefighters are working to put out a fire caused by the strike as residents remain indoors due to the smoke.

What is happening in Israel is not being reported in the Swedish media but don't let anybody fool you, this is the real situation.

Swedish Media Ignores Social Protests in Israel

Tens of thousands demonstrate  in central Tel-Aviv against housing shortages and high rents

Yesterday I wrote to Sydsvenskan and asked why this relatively large newspaper that covers all of southern Sweden, has not managed to even write one line concerning the daily demonstrations, some three weeks after the social unrest started in Israel,

The answer from the foreign news desk came quickly and read: We here at Sydsvenskan make an assessment every day and decide what to write in the newspaper. While I do find the issue interesting, we have not managed to get funds to cover the demonstrations.

What load of bullsh-t. It is clear that the editors at Sydsvenskan do not find the social unrest in Israel sexy enough to write up and article about. By “sexy”, I mean “shows Israelis oppressing Palestinians or flotilla activists”. It appears that Israel only should be mentioned when law-breaking Swedes are trying to illegally enter the Gaza Strip or in a situation where Israel can be portrayed in a distorted way.

So far, the left wing tabloid Aftonbladet is the only Swedish media outlet that has reported on the ongoing large-scale demonstrations, which occur daily in Israel. That Aftonbladet decided to spin the story in an anti-Israel way should not be a surprise to anyone that has read this blog before.

It is appallingly obvious that Swedes care little about real news items in Israel and purposely choose to turn a blind eye on any story which does not contain violence and hatred between Israelis and Palestinians. 

Biased media reporting in the making...