Filter magazine reveals in its latest issue, the truth behind the so-called Organ scandal three years ago. Yesterday Oisin Cantwell wrote about the background of culture article that caused a diplomatic crisis between Sweden and Israel. Today, says Åsa Linderborg on the crazy train after publication, to be branded as anti-Semitic and persecuted by the world's media. And if the betrayal from the Swedish press when it turned out that Aftonbladet was right - Israel systematically looted dead bodies on bodies.
Donald Boström is at Aftonbladet and sprättar reader post. In one of the envelopes is a lawsuit of 50 million. He looks at me and says: - Should I do it here, I work my ass off.
It is autumn 2009 and
Donald is the world's most hudflängda journalist. The cause is an
article he wrote about Palestinian mothers in the West Bank as a suspect
in Israel has plundered their sons on the body. The text was
illustrated by a photo of Bilal, a stone-throwing boy killed by Israeli
military, fraktakts away and then returned to the family with sunken
stomach cut open and sewn from neck to groin. The case was really old,
from 1992, and already described in the acclaimed anthology inshallah
from 2001. Following this summer's revelations about organ trafficking
in New Jersey, hoping Donald even this would be investigated.
Donald
Article published on 17 August 2009. The first two days nothing
happened. Then it took full house in hell. Aftonbladet and Donald
accused of anti-Semitism and lies spread, it stormed in four months. The
drive is now being examined by Madeleine Engstrand Andersson in a big
story in the paper filter. I read dazed and reminded once again of the
publication that created the Journal story.
The
carousel began on the evening of 19 August when I receive phone calls
from an Israeli radio station that throws me out of the live broadcast.
The reporter wants me to recognize me as an anti-Semite, because Donald
Bostrom article contains allegations of organ harvesting without taking
into account that there is an old anti-Semitic urban legend that Jews
bake bread in Christian blood. Then phoned CNN and BBC.
Only
then hooked Swedish media: antisemite Bostrom, yes yes yes! Antisemite
Linderborg, yes yes yes! The brown color never goes out of Aftonbladet
walls, no no no!
Sweden's
Ambassador to Israel apologized on behalf of the entire Swedish
population. It was several days before Foreign Minister Carl Bildt on
his blog - where else? - Defended the Swedish press freedom. This led to
the diplomatic crisis and that a planned state visit to Israel was
canceled. The atmosphere was intimidating. The e-mails crashed when a
thousand letters per hour landed, many with the same image on
Aftonbladet editor Jan Helin with Hitler Mustache.
The
phone rang around the clock from around the world. Reporters came to
Aftonbladet Culture from England, Italy, Russia, Brazil, Spain, China
and countries I do not remember. All had either read a google
translation gave blittanblaj of understanding or a deviously manipulated
version of our own, authorized translation.
Jag
was quoted on six continents, got talking everywhere - except in
Sweden. Same thing with Donald. The article discussed and skälldes out
everywhere, week in and week out, over our heads.
Press
Club organized a debate in which I and Jan Guillou stood on one side
and Björn Wiman DN, Maciej Zaremba DN and Rachel Chukri Sydsvenskan
stood on the other. Donald had to sit in the audience. Immediately it
was clear that PK's chairman, Ulrika Knutson, who was in the evening,
also wanted to debate against Aftonbladet.
- We drew 0-0 and it was not bad considering that they were four and we were two, summed Guillou afterwards.
The debate was focused on whether the publication was consciously or unconsciously anti-Semitic. Just Guillou and I wanted to talk about Bilal and the Israeli occupation.
Aftonbladet's critics turned out that night also medical experts in organ transplantation - they had even knowledge that far exceeded medical science.
Bitter? I usually commend myself to never be GRIEVED, but in this case, oh yes I am. I'm so fucking bitter. Not so much for myself, but what do you call the bourgeoisie total indifference to all Palestinian victims? Hatred of Donald and Aftonbladet weighs slightly when compared to the ridicule which hit Bilal's family.
My boss Helle Klein and my then husband Anders serviced me from morning to night with material from the liberal press in Israel - where there are plenty of real liberals but it is unfortunately not the ones running the country - partly or wholly supported our cause. Without them, I had fallen apart, and how Donald did the press know I still do not. A dull evening I phoned Jan Helin, who stood awe worth steadily all the time, and offered my resignation. For the first time I heard a slight irritation in his voice:
- Go to bed, you need to sleep.
When the bourgeois press fires the sauna at their worst, offers Bonnier into its annual banquet at Villa Manila. I do not want to go, but Leif GW Persson says I must. In the foyer I meet one of the Bonnier family more excited gamänger. He takes me by the arm and whispered:
- You can hang off your bodies in the closet.
I laugh nervously and step into the beautiful hall. Then it will be like when Morran approaching the Moomin Valley - everything stops and freezes. One and another colleague walks past my back and touches my hand, Butterfly easy, as an aid in secret: I am on your side, but let it stay between us.
I hide at the bottom of the garden where Expressen Nisse Schwartz kindly talk to me until GW lumbering back and complain about the wine, he wants further. We go to the town where GW invite to dinner at a cost of Donalds complete article fee. He bowls and says:
- Hello på're Little One, you are feeling depressed're not together so you want to kill yourself?
He recalled when he, as Peter Bratt source in brothel scandal, was chased over stock and stone, and seriously thought about pulling träfracken on. The rifle was loaded. Then he says:
- This raided with Palestinians is nothing new, you know. I've seen lots of pictures like that, I even have some in your own possession.
- What? May I see them?
- Nah, that's impossible. They are in something of outbuildings on land, I know not where.
I was getting desperate. All the time we got advice from people who knew something, but could not help us.
The pinion third week calling Britta, an elderly lady from Geneva. She says she knows a lawyer in the United Nations to prepare 15 different lawsuits in which Palestinian families accuse the Israeli government for taking organs from their deceased sons. Aagård Martin wears a month to get the woman to give us an interview, but she dare not for fear of ruin process.
Most things get Donald. He calls five times a day with new information. He had, among other things, a leak in the military Abu Kabir who had given him a list of autopsied Palestinians. There is Bilal with. I did not dare to publish.
It was not only Donald who was sued for 50 million, including Aftonbladet was sued for the same amount. An American in New York found that the Swedish press freedom would be eliminated because Aftonbladet was a magazine that was distributed in New York, SAS plane landed at the JFK each day with free newspapers to passengers. Moreover, Aftonbladet's Per Bjurman correlate checking account in New York, that has Aftonbladet business in a country with a completely different press law than Sweden.
The bizarre atmosphere hung over us for four seasons before the U.S. court declared it invalid. I do not know how it is now, but then - this was just after the Gaza war - called hawks in Israel people threatening to sue directly or difficult media. The method was effective: We fell silent. When Donald increasingly despairing called on various witness statements and article suggestions, dried, I end up not responding. Yes, I failed him there.
Donald was easier to be heard in Israel. There were those who either wanted to punch him, face to face or was sincerely interested in what he had to offer. In the Knesset, the issue with much greater openness than in Sweden.
It was also in Israel's Channel 2 as the world's foremost researchers in organ trafficking, Nancy Scheper-Hughes at Berkeley University, three days before Christmas undisturbed got to tell you that Aftonbladet was right. Well, during Yehuda lift line ran Abu Kabir systematic organ theft. It was about thousands of people.
This was breaking news all over the world - I saw it over and over again on CNN - but in Sweden commented on the news at all. Not even Aftonbladet did something larger being. Jan Helin decided that we would wait and let the liberal press spread the news with a sincere or disguised excuse. Such is Jan Helin, when he does wrong, he usually recognize it and he expects others to do the same. And the news is always a novelty. I wish all publishers were equally renhåriga, but not. The silence lay like a blanket of snow over Christmas.
All trains have a name, and Donald Article baptized quickly to "Bodies" affair, but it is this that is the real scandal: Swedish press swim in shoals, hunt in packs - either for political reasons, opportunism or sheer nervousness - and when convicted people act as nothing. So keep quiet about the truth of pure prestige.
Three years later, gives us total filter redress and more. The number is now commercially available, you can read an interview that Donald had with Chen Kugel, coroner and Lieutenant Colonel at Abu Kabir already in 2001 blew the whistle on the organ theft as the Swedish media claimed was only Aftonbladet antisemitic fantasies. It lasted a day. Heart valves, skin, corneas for transplantation. Heart, liver, kidney research.
Donald's article, says Kugel, helped to stop the illegal abuses suffered by Palestinians, but also Israeli soldiers, Orthodox Jews, guest workers, and even tourists. Today there is over a hundred lawsuits and Supreme Court judges routinely to large damages.
Asa Linderborg, Aftonbladet's cultural section I am often asked if I regret publishing. But why should I regret a cultural item actually changed anything for real?
I regret that the article was not clear that it obviously was not ettdirekt relationship between rabbi in New Jersey in 2009 and Abu Kabir 1992nd Perhaps I should also, as Jan Helin now doing in Filters, apologizing for not better understood how the article could be seen in the context of the vile myths about how Jews bake bread on their enemies blood.
I just do not understand quite how Donald would expressed them: "I know there is an anti-Semitic urban legend, but I still want to talk about killing Palestinians might have been plundered of their organs ..." It would not have changed anything in Sweden has always criticism of Israel's occupation policies branded as anti-Semitism.
Filters are available commercially today.
I have no illusions that our press colleagues to help spread what is
there, but I urge everyone to read the story about culture article that
spread all over the world and went from words to action.
Original Source this article has been translated using google-translator paragraph by paragraph.
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