Baroness Jenny Tonge, a former Liberal Democrat member of the British parliament, said this week that Israel should set up an inquiry to disprove allegations that its medical teams in Haiti “harvested” organs of earthquake victims for use in transplants, The Jewish Chronicle (JC) reported Thursday.
According to the report, the organ theft claims were published last week in the Palestine Telegraph, an online journal based in Gaza of which Baroness Tonge is a patron.
Tonge told the JC that IDF forces were “to be commended for their fantastic response to the Haitian earthquake," but added, “To prevent allegations such as these — which have already been posted on YouTube — going any further, the IDF and the Israeli Medical Association should establish an independent inquiry immediately to clear the names of the team in Haiti.”
Ed Fordham, the Lib Dem candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, was quoted by the JC as saying, “It’s abhorrent that anyone should suggest that something as perverse and sick as this should be investigated.”
Monroe Palmer, chairman of Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel, added, “Whilst I welcome Tonge’s approval of Israeli actions in Haiti, she is misguided to call for any investigation. On this basis, there could be calls for an investigation to discover the ‘truth’ in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
Matthew Harris, Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Hendon, called it “perverse in the extreme to suggest that there needs to be an investigation of allegations to which she gives no credence”.
According to the JC, an Israeli Embassy spokesman dismissed the allegations as “not fit to grace even the sickest of publications”.
The allegations came in an article titled Focus on Israel: Harvesting Haitian Organs by an American researcher, Stephen Lendman, who accused Israel of a “crime against humanity”.
Lendman referred to a “damning” YouTube video uploaded by an American resident of Seattle, Washington, accusing soldiers in the IDF delegation to the earthquake site in Haiti of being involved in stealing organs from their patients.
To watch the defamatory video – click here
The man, who calls himself T. West, fronts a group called AfriSynergy Productions, whose declared goal is to empower the black man. The video purports to present something to think about while exploiting the horrible tragedy that has befallen Haiti to recycle false claims that IDF soldiers engage in organ trafficking.
Yitzhak Benhorin contributed to the report