The Organ-Harvesting Libel (Aftonbladet 2009 and Variants)
The claim
“The Israeli army deliberately kills Palestinians in order to harvest and traffic their organs.”
Demonstrably invented: a forged document, a fictitious event, an accusation refuted by direct evidence.
Historical context
In August 2009 the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet published Donald Boström's article insinuating that the IDF killed Palestinians to harvest their organs, igniting a Sweden–Israel diplomatic crisis. Boström admitted he had no evidence ('whether it's true or not — I have no idea'), and a Palestinian family he cited denied making the allegation. The story nonetheless mutated: 2010 rumors that IDF earthquake-relief teams were harvesting organs in Haiti, a 2014 TIME item retracted after criticism, and post-October 2023 social-media claims about 'skin banks' and organ theft, including on Houthi television. The narrative inflates a real 1990s scandal at Israel's Abu Kabir forensic institute — tissue taken without consent from Israeli and Palestinian dead alike — into a fabricated program of deliberate killing.
The debunking
No evidence has ever supported the claim that Israeli forces kill Palestinians for organs. The author himself disclaimed knowledge of its truth; the family at the center of the story denied its key allegation; and mainstream Swedish newspapers condemned the piece as evidence-free rumor that abandoned journalistic ethics. The kernel of fact — the Abu Kabir institute's documented retention of tissue from autopsied bodies of all backgrounds without consent, a genuine scandal that ended in the 1990s and was legitimately criticized — involved no killing and no targeting of Palestinians as such. The libel's structure is a direct descendant of the medieval blood libel, with organs substituted for blood and the 'Jews kill gentile children for their bodies' motif intact, as the ADL and the Jerusalem Center case study document. Reporting critically on forensic-medicine abuses or organ-trafficking crime anywhere, including in Israel, is legitimate journalism; the fabrication is the claim of deliberate military killing of Palestinians for their organs.
Descends from
The medieval charge that Jews kill gentiles to use their bodies (blood for ritual) is transposed onto the Israeli army, with organs substituted for blood — a substitution made explicit in ADL's analysis of the 2009 article and its 2010 Haiti and post-2023 variants.
Full lineage
Sources
- Anti-Defamation League (2023). Unfounded Claims of 'Organ Harvesting' Reignite Embers of Decades-Old Hospital Scandal and Centuries-Old Trope. ADL.
- Mikael Tossavainen (2010). The Aftonbladet Organ-Trafficking Accusations against Israel: A Case Study. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.