Apparently Israel really *did* harvest the organs of dead Palestinians

A few months ago I made fun of National Review’s Jonah Goldberg for getting hot and bothered about a Swedish newspaper’s report that Israel had harvested the organs of dead Palestinians. The context: Goldberg had spent the previous day defending accusations of non-existent “death panels” in the health reform bill as speaking to a “larger truth” about the reform.

But I didn’t actually believe the Israelis had harvested the organs of dead Palestinians. It sounded like an urban myth. AP reports:

JERUSALEM – Israel has admitted that in the 1990s, its forensic pathologists harvested organs from dead bodies, including Palestinians, without permission of their families.

The issue emerged with publication of an interview with the then-head of Israel’s Abu Kabir forensic institute, Dr. Jehuda Hiss. The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic, who released it because of a huge controversy last summer over an allegation by a Swedish newspaper that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. Israel hotly denied the charge.

Parts of the interview were broadcast on Israel’s Channel 2 TV over the weekend. In it, Hiss said, “We started to harvest corneas … Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family.”

The Channel 2 report said that in the 1990s, forensic specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives.

In a response to the TV report, the Israeli military confirmed that the practice took place. “This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer,” the military said in a statement quoted by Channel 2.

First of all: Not good.

Second of all: Americans defend our government’s strong ties to Israel because it’s the only real democracy in the Middle East. And that’s true. But even democracies can do really, really awful things sometimes. Being a democracy is usually a good thing, but it’s not the only thing.

Third of all: I was wrong to equate the organ-harvesting story with the “death panel” nonsense from last summer. After all: the organs actually were harvested. The death panels were never, ever part of the reform bill.

Health care bill passes the Senate

I find that health reform is something about which I don’t have much, if anything, original to say. That’s probably a damaging admission for any Aspiring Pundit, but it’s true. That said, I’m heartened to see that the Senate passed its version of the health reform bill last night. And while I suspect the bill is far from perfect, I also believe it goes a long way toward the goal of ensuring wider access to health care than currently exists.

A conservative friend Tweeted last night that “Dems have no clue what populist hell they’ve just unleashed in this nation,” as though we didn’t just live through the Summer of Death Panel Obamahitler Screaming. And Atrios might be right that the compromises involved in getting the bill to 60 votes will make it so noxious to voters that Democrats will take a major hit.

But I suspect that Paul Krugman is right. He blogs about President Obama:

But on health care, I don’t see how he could have gotten much more. How could he have made Joe Lieberman less, um, Liebermanish? And I have to say that much as I disagree with Ben Nelson about many things, he has seemed refreshingly honest, at least in the final stages, about what he will and won’t accept. Meanwhile the fact is that Republicans have formed a solid bloc of opposition to Obama’s ability to do, well, anything.

Some of my commenters have argued that even with this bill Democrats may well lose seats next year — possibly even more than they would have without it. Definitely on the first point; on the second, I don’t think people realize just how damaging it would be if Obama didn’t get any major reforms passed. But in any case, that misses the point. The reason to pass reform, even inadequate reform, now isn’t to gain seats next year; it is to pass reform, which will do vast good, during the window that’s available. If it doesn’t pass now, it will probably be many nears before the next chance.

Right. We vote people in to do certain things, but often they don’t do things because doing things might make it harder for them to retain power. But what’s the point of helping them retain power if they won’t use it to do those certain things? The Democrats will likely lose seats in 2010 — that was probably going to happen anyway, given the history of midterm elections. As somebody who cares more about health reform than the electoral prospects of Democrats, I’m willing to sacrifice some of the latter to get a bit of the former. Otherwise, what’s politics for?

Politically speaking, the “larger truth” is that Israel is harvesting the organs of Palestinians

Yesterday, Jonah Goldberg admitted that “death panels” never existed in proposed health reform legislation — but defended them politically, since they hinted at dark possibilities that could possibly happen, supposedly, maybe if reform was passed.

Today, the shoe is apparently on the other foot. Here’s Goldberg’s 11:25 a.m. blog posting at National Review:

You’ve got to wonder if he recognizes how hilarious this is.

Death panels: They don’t have to be true if they could possibly be true someday

Jonah Goldberg writes about whether “death panels” actually exist, and comes up with a novel answer: Yes and no.

As a matter of the finer points of policy discussion, I think the death-panel label is awfully blunt and inexact.

But in the arena of a vital political contest, I think M&S are right that it distilled some important issues down to an important truth: if Obama, Pelosi, Waxman et al get their way, the relationship between the citizen and the state is profoundly, and perhaps permanently, altered and down that path lurks death panels.

So: No, death panels were never part of proposed health reform. BUT: Hey, it’s politics! And since health reform is different from the status quo — well, we certainly wouldn’t be surprised if death panels actually happened someday, because that’s the kind of thing that happens when change happens.

Funny thing is, I think this is Goldberg’s attempt at intellectual honesty.

UPDATE: Over at Andrew Sullivan’s blog, Conor Clarke makes much the same point in response to a WSJ op-ed piece:

Second — and this gets to the heart of the slippery debate — hypothetical arguments are totally non-falsifiable. It Betsy McCaughey says the text of the House health-care bill will create death panels, it’s pretty easy to prove her wrong. But if Andrew Klavan then pops up, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, with the Hegelian argument that the “logic” of history points towards death panels … well, that’s rather more difficult, and rather more frustrating. The “logic” of history might point toward many things. But until time machines come along, I’m of the opinion that we should stick to the text of the bill.

We accidentally killed your grandma

Apparently, there’s no more end-of-life counseling in the health bill — the provision that incorrectly led folks like Sarah Palin to claim the government would operate “death panels” which would decide which lives were no longer worth living. Nobody who isn’t nuts or plainly dishonest bought into that claim, but still the provision is gone.

A pending House bill has language authorizing Medicare to finance beneficiaries’ consultations with professionals on whether to authorize aggressive and potentially life-saving interventions later in life. Though the consultations would be voluntary, and a similar provision passed in Congress last year without such a furor, Mr. Grassley said it was being dropped in the Senate “because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.”

Because, clearly, government bureaucrats are that stupid or venal that they would “misintepret” a provision meant to help people decide on their end-of-life care and use it as a justification to, you know, start killing senior citizens who have nasty colds.

I think it’s clear the debate over health care has departed from any basis in rationality. Instead, folks against health reform have decided to imagine the worst possible motives and actions of their opponents, and used that to justify spreading false fears based on lies.

How else to explain this comment from American Spectator writer George Neumayr?

Still, one proponent of the euthanasia theory, Mr. Neumayr, said he saw no reason to stop making the claim.

“I think a government-run plan that is administered by politicians and bureaucrats who support euthanasia is inevitably going to reflect that view,” he said, “and I don’t think that’s a crazy leap.”

Right. Killing off senior citizens is just the kind of thing a Democrat would support. So I’m going to make sure that everybody thinks that’s what’s happening. Even though it’s not. That is a crazy leap. And it’s enough, apparently, to make the Senate change course. How utterly stupid.