The Director-General of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, on Friday raised serious and legitimate questions about the "record numbers" announced by the Israeli occupation regarding organ donation, stressing that these huge statistics do not answer the fundamental and urgent question related to the sources of this large number of kidneys and human organs that are being transplanted.
Al-Bursh explained in a press statement that there is a stark paradox in the fact that the occupation, which detains the bodies of Palestinian martyrs for many years in "cemeteries of numbers" and refrigerators, is the same one that today boasts unprecedented donation figures, trying to present itself as an advanced humanitarian model in this field to the international community.
The health official pointed to documented cases of bodies returned to their families after long periods of detention that were "missing organs," especially kidneys, without attaching medical or autopsy reports explaining the reasons for this, and without allowing any legal right for accountability or investigation.
Dr. Al-Bursh stressed that these facts are not based on unsubstantiated claims, but rather on testimonies of doctors who examined the bodies and proven field cases of bodies returned with amputated organs after being stolen in occupation facilities.
He affirmed that Palestinians do not oppose medical science or the principle of organ donation as a supreme humanitarian value, but they categorically reject turning these values into a "propaganda facade" to cover up crimes of exploiting the Palestinian body, whether alive or martyred, to create suspicious medical achievements that are promoted globally while the tragic truth of the source of those organs is absent.
These statements come at a time when Palestinian and international human rights organizations are demanding the necessity of forming an independent international investigation committee to uncover the fate of missing organs from the bodies of detained martyrs, amid fears of the spread of the phenomenon of "organ theft" that has haunted the occupation's medical record for decades, in the absence of international oversight over Israeli hospitals and forensic centers that deal with Palestinian bodies.
Documented cases of bodies returned to their families after long periods of detention that were "missing organs."
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Gaza Health Director Questions Source of Human Organs Held by Occupation, Reveals "Missing" Bodies