Michael de Laine

By Michael de Laine, The Copenhagen Voice, 25 August 2009

Israel wants the Swedish government to condemn a report in Aftonbladet that Israeli soldiers have systematically plundered Palestinian war victims for organs such as kidneys, supposedly sold illegally. Sweden says the press is free and the government cannot step in. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt faces strong criticism from Israel during a planned visit in September.

Israel wants the Swedish government to condemn a report last Monday in Aftonbladet - the largest-selling Swedish daily newspaper - that Israeli soldiers have systematically plundered Palestinian war victims for organs such as kidneys, supposedly sold illegally.

Sweden says the press is free and the government cannot step in. But the country’s Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, will face strong criticism from Israel during a planned visit on 10 September - especially after Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier, Sweden’s ambassador to Israel, criticised the newspaper article in a statement cleared by her foreign ministry’s Middle East section.

Avigdor Liberman, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister, “will convey a sharp protest to his Swedish counterpart, Carl Bildt, for failing to support the condemnation issued by Sweden’s ambassador in Israel, Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier, of the defamatory article published this week in the daily newspaper Aftonbladet,” the Israeli ministry said on 20 August.

According to the ministry’s statement, Liberman said that it was a pity that, after Swedish Ambassador to Israel Borsiin Bonnier did the right thing and condemned the article, thereby making clear that the newspaper did not represent Swedish views, the Swedish Foreign Ministry chose to distance itself from her remarks instead of supporting them.

“The meaning of freedom of the press is the freedom to publish the truth, not the freedom to lie and slander,” Liberman continued. “A country that truly wants to safeguard democratic values should strongly condemn false reports that reek of anti-Semitism, such as the one published this week by the newspaper Aftonbladet.”

Liberman added, “It’s a shame that the Swedish Foreign Ministry doesn’t intervene in cases of blood libels against Jews. This is reminiscent of Sweden’s position during World War II, when it also failed to intervene. The article published this week is a natural outgrowth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and blood libels in which Jews were accused of adding the blood of Christian children to the Passover matzahs [bread in the form of crackers].”

The Aftonbladet report, by freelance journalist Daniel Boström, accused the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) of systematically plundering organs such as kidneys from its Palestinian victims and thereafter selling the organs illegally. Apart from comments from Palestinian families, who claimed that their sons had had their organs removed, and local UN staff, the journalist offered no concrete evidence for his accusations.

In 1992, Boström witnessed how a 19-year-old Palestinian, who had been shot by the IDF, was abducted, only to re-appear a few days later with stitches closing operation scars from his chin to his stomach. The journalist has connected these episodes with the arrest earlier this year of a man accused of arranging organ trafficking lasting several years.

Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who arrives in Europe today for talks with the EU, where Sweden currently holds the Presidency under Carl Bildt, demanded that Sweden formally condemn the story, which was published last week in Sweden’s top selling Aftonbladet daily.

“We’re not asking the Swedish government for an apology, we’re asking for their condemnation,” Netanyahu told a meeting of cabinet ministers, according to an unnamed Israeli official quoted in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.

Israel’s finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, said Bildt, “is no longer welcome” to visit the country next month.

“Anyone who is unwilling to condemn such a blood libel could be considered unwanted in Israel,” he said. “The Swedish government cannot remain indifferent, and the crisis will remain until Sweden responds in a different manner.”

Bildt said the report was a matter for Aftonbladet and its editors and publisher. “Freedom of speech is a basic value in Sweden,” his said in a statement on Friday.

Bildt’s meeting in September was briefly threatened with cancellation, but Israeli politicians are now saying the only subject under discussion will be Aftonbladet article.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt is trying to bring Swedish-Israeli relations back to normality.

Swedish media representatives are debating whether the article should have been published at all, as there was no documentation for its claims, whether the newspaper is anti-Semitic, and why Israel should not be criticised for its conduct.

The Israeli Foreign Minister also threatened to revoke Aftonbladet’s press credentials in Israel or, at the very least, not to aid or cooperate with the newspaper’s journalists.