Blood libeler Bostrom not sorry, lies to Ha'aretz

Swedish "reporter" Donald Bostrom, who claimed that the IDF kills Palestinian Arabs and harvests their organs, is in Israel. He chose the most insanely left-wing journalist he could find, Gideon Levy, to interview him. (Even Levy calls Bostrom's article "problematic.")

Are you sorry about anything?

"I'm sorry there are so many lies about me. Like for example that they say I wrote that the soldiers hunted for youths so as to take their organs. It's obvious that's a lie. Even the Palestinians don't make a claim like that. And the other side attributes anti-Semitism to me. I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry I've become a political tool. I'm sorry the article caused damage to the struggle for human rights here. And above all, I'm sorry that no one took the article seriously and that they did not examine the suspicions. In Sweden too they didn't take it seriously."

In other words, he's not sorry at all that he wrote an article that indicates that Jewish Israelis are bloodthirsty, greedy, cold blooded killers. He's just sorry that they were offended by it.

Would you write it differently now?

"If I were writing it again, I would stress that the IDF liquidates so many youths without a trial and that they take bodies and conduct autopsies on them without the permission of the families. My article created confusion and was incorrectly interpreted. I admire your democratic courage to invite me to explain myself here."

Do you think the IDF killed people to get body organs?

"I don't think soldiers behaved like that. I don't think they killed in order to gather organs. The truth is that they kill them without a trial and their bodies are taken to Abu Kabir. We don't know whether they take out the organs. That has still to be further investigated. No one opened up the bodies after they were returned and only one man knows the truth, Prof. Yehuda Hiss, the director of the forensic institute.

Some Swedish children go missing every year in the very same country that he eats his meals. I don't know whether Bostrom butchers and eats small children for breakfast. He might be eating them. He might not. I'm just pointing out that children are missing, Bostrom eats every day, some people are cannibals and accusations have been made. No one witnesses his eating habits. It has to be further investigated. There are a lot of question marks.

So why did you publish baseless accusations?

"I think the article led to good things and bad things, but now it is on the table. Israeli journalists must investigate. You have done good things in the past. Haaretz gives better coverage of the conflict than the Swedish papers, so go on investigating this. There are a lot of question marks."

What Bostrom doesn't address (and Levy is too solicitous to ask) are his public statements quoted by the Algerian Press Service that over a thousand organs have been harvested by Israel, that Israel also takes organs from other foreigners killed in Israel and that the organ harvesting began in 1960. He made these additional claims as he accepted a $5000 award from Algeria and was feted by Algerian officials for this article.

Even if the APS misquoted him, it was obvious that the only reason he received this $5000 award was because his Algerian hosts understood his article as proof that Israel does kill Palestinian Arabs specifically to steal their organs. Bostrom certainly didn't say anything while he accepted his award to clarify his position or deny those claims; indeed he expanded on them.

He's clearly not sorry about anything except for the fact that he has been exposed as a sham journalist and a libeler.