Host: “Details have been revealed about organ theft and skin theft. How do you follow [the matter] when the body of one of the Martyrs (i.e., terrorists) is delivered?” …
PA Jerusalem District Media Advisor Ma’arouf Al-Rifai: “I hoped that when [Israel] demanded the bodies held in the Gaza Strip (i.e., Israeli hostages held by Hamas), the Palestinian negotiators would at least demand the bodies held [in Israel].”
Official PA TV host: “The numbers are large.” Ma’arouf Al-Rifai: “350 throughout the homeland.”
Host: “Details have been revealed about organ theft and skin theft. How do you follow [the matter] when the body of one of the Martyrs (i.e., terrorists) is delivered?” …
Ma’arouf Al-Rifai: “Four or five people are invited... They are given the body at one of the checkpoints... A condition is imposed [on them] and they sign a commitment not to hold a funeral procession. Those five or 10 close people go to bury [the body] directly so that it will not undergo a medical examination or be presented to a doctor.”
Host: “This proves there is a problem, or there is a crime.”
Ma’arouf Al-Rifai: “Of course. We have been told about many bodies that organs are missing. Eyes are missing, the chest is open, some organs are missing.”
[Official PA TV, Topic of the Day, Jan. 4, 2026]
Organ theft - Acting Director-General of the PA Ministry of Justice’s Forensic Medicine Administration Dr. Ashraf Al-Qadi has refuted the PA libel that Israel steals organs from dead Palestinians: “All the Martyrs we have checked and seen, none of them had any theft of their organs. I don’t know about the Martyrs from before, whom we did not check as a Palestinian side or authority.” [Official PA TV, Good Morning Jerusalem, March 11, 2022] Like other PA libels, this libel contains a grain of truth that the PA has distorted into a lie.
In 2001, an Israeli investigative journalist exposed that from the years 1988 to 2000, in violation of Israeli law, doctors at the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine had taken body parts for research and transplants of skin and corneas without permission from the relatives. Most body parts were taken from Israeli Jews, but also from Israeli Arabs, Israeli soldiers and Palestinian terrorists. At the time, the institute was run by Professor Yehuda Hiss who was personally involved in the scandal. Hiss was removed from his position as director but remained as chief pathologist until later investigations uncovered that he had continued his misconduct, which led to his dismissal from the Institute by the Ministry of Health in May 2012. There has been no documented case of Israeli organ theft since then.
