The former leader of the main forensic institute official acknowledged that the bodies had been taken from the body, including Palestinians, during the 1990s without the permission of the families of the deceased.
Dr. Jehuda Hiss made these statements in an interview in 2000 to an American university. Nancy Scheper-Hughes has decided not to make it public now because of a controversy that erupted last summer after an article in a Swedish newspaper hinting that Israeli soldiers kill Palestinians to trade their bodies. Allegations that Israel has strongly denied.
Excerpts of the interview were broadcast this weekend on the second Israeli television. Dr. Jehuda Hiss was that corneas were harvested from cadavers' in extremely informal. "No permission was sought from the family," says he. The chain says that in the 1990s, specialists of the Abu Kabir morgue remove skin, cornea, heart valves and bones of dead soldiers and Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreigners, usually without permission their families.
In response to the report, the Israeli army has acknowledged in a statement the existence of such facts. "These activities have stopped a decade ago, and it does not happen," the army said.
In his interview, Dr. Jehuda Hiss tells how doctors concealed the disappearance of the cornea. "We closed our eyes with glue" and "we did not take cornea when we knew that families open their eyes."
Many elements had emerged into the open when the physician was dismissed from the institute in 2004, due to irregularities on the use of organs removed. He had received a non-place and still working at the institute.
Dr. Hiss has led the institution since 1988. But according to him, in 1987, military surgeons have used skin harvested from corpses for transplant burned. The doctor said he thought at the time that the families had given their agreement. The samples have ceased in 2000.
At the time of his dismissal, the families of sick people and victims of Israeli-Palestinian conflict had complained, but nothing proves the veracity of information reported by the Swedish daily "Aftonbladet", that Israeli soldiers would Palestinians killed to recover their bodies. Israeli officials called the story of "antisemitic".
Even if the Palestinians were not the only ones affected by this practice, Nancy Scheper-Hughes decided to publish the interview because of the "symbolic" about the removal of the "skin of a population considered to be the enemy ".
While ensuring that all samples had been authorized by the families, the Ministry of Health acknowledged that "the recommendations of the time were not clear"