SELECTIVE OUTRAGE
A subject for an objective academic study

Gaza's Grisly Trophies
And there was not even a hint of outrage when Mideast Dispatch Archive reported on May 11, 2004 that body parts of six murdered Israelis were paraded around in Gaza as trophies by Palestinian mobs, including members of the PA security forces. Some even played football with body parts in the street. One disembodied head was placed on a table so television cameras could film it close up.
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000188.html

But there is no lack of outrage when Israel is in the dock
How does one explain the glaring difference between the mild media reactions to the above well documented reports and the immediate frenzied response to the unsubstantiated inference that the IDF harvested body parts of Palestinians, in the article by Donald Bostrom in the Swedish Aftonbladet? And how does one explain the instant fame acquired by the author whose name suddenly achieved over 400,000 Google results.

Bostrom's own words confirm that his accusations are based on flimsy inferences rather than evidence. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post on August 20, he said critics "think I'm accusing the IDF of stealing organs. That's not what I'm doing. I just recorded the Palestinian families saying that." He went on to say "I don't think there is a connection between the New York thing and what happened in the West Bank in the 90s." Astonishingly, Mr. Bostrom nevertheless used the NY story in his leading paragraph together with a prominent photograph of one of the accused, a bearded Mr. Rosenbaum. More egregiously, Mr. Bostrom omitted to tell his readers that there were only five Jews among the 44 people arrested in the NY corruption and organ brokering scandal, including two New Jersey mayors, an assemblyman, and a city deputy mayor. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418651681&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

Evidently, when Israel is in the dock, an accusation doesn't need to meet even the minimum requirements of journalistic integrity to be widely accepted.

The tenuous nature of Bostrom's accusations are all too obvious when one considers that he refers to hearsay incidents in 1992, to infer that the IDF harvested organs in the Cast Lead operation in 2008-9

Exaggeration
In enjoying his new fame, Mr. Bostrom is evidently not averse to exaggeration. On receiving an award for excellence from the National Federation of Algerian Journalists he casually increased the number of Palestinians victims whose body parts had been harvested, to more than 1,000.
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/News.php/2009/09/25/bostrom-israel-harvested-body-parts-of-m

Prof. Hiss
Most of the articles that followed Bostrom's, see a conspiratorial link between the IDF in 2009 and the unrelated 1990 incident in which Professor Hiss, who was then head of Israel's forensic institute admitted that he had harvested organs from cadavers without permission of their families. This incident closely resembles the Dick Van Velzen case in Britain cited above.

Israel's Health Ministry responded that the guidelines at that time were not clear, but that they have been severely tightened and strictly enforced since then. Although Professor Hiss still works as chief pathologist, he was dismissed as head of the forensic institute.
Israel's attorney-general Rubenstein at the time decided not to indict him since "there is no suspicion of corruption or profiteering on the part of Prof. Hiss, and the only interest he had was the advancement of medical research."

There was a great deal of dissatisfaction with Rubenstein's decision. Former Health Minister Dahan said he was sure that there was room for a criminal investigation but that there was at least one encouraging result, namely, that the questionable practices in the Forensic Institute would not continue.

Disgusting as this episode was, it is dishonest journalism to draw a false link from it to the IDF's behavior in Operation Cast Lead.

Journalistic standards
Even one of Israel's severest critics, Matthew Cassel, assistant editor of The Electronic Intifada, cannot close his eyes to the obvious defects in the Bostrom article. Cassel regards Bostrom's baseless organ theft accusations as a propaganda gift for Israel. He wrote

"I support uncovering human rights violations and war crimes wherever they occur, especially in Palestine, where I have worked for many years. I do believe Bostrom's intentions were to do much the same but that his process was highly irresponsible. The problem is not that he is accusing the State of Israel of wrongdoing, but that he is making accusations of what would amount to extremely serious war crimes while providing absolutely no evidence to support his claims..

.. The editors at the Swedish daily Aftonbladet who published this piece, should've sent it back to the author and told him to investigate the issue further until he found evidence to corroborate his claims."

Conclusion
Like all types of incitement to hate, this example of reckless journalism, is harmful to peace efforts. Like real viruses and computer viruses they spread and mutate and acquire long lasting lives of their own. Predictably, Bostrom's story has spawned cartoons of Jews stealing body parts and drinking Arab blood. Algeria's al-Khabar newspaper has fantasized Jewish-directed gangs of Algerians and Moroccans capturing children for harvesting of their body parts. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/print.php?newid=307494

Even Al Jazeera Magazine has been infected with the hysteria. In a December 3, article it refers to an international Israeli conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs and repeats a Pravda story that Israel has brought some 25,000 Ukrainian children into the occupied entity over the past two years in order to harvest their organs.