Swedish newspaper accuses Israeli troops of harvesting organs from dead Palestinians
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Israeli troops are accused in a newspaper article of harvesting organs from dead Palestinians, and Israel wants Sweden's government to condemn the Swedish paper that published it.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman compared the Swedish Foreign Ministry's hands-off position to the country's neutrality during World War II.
"It's a shame that the Swedish Foreign Ministry fails to intervene in a case of blood libels against Jews," Lieberman told Sweden's ambassador to Israel on Thursday evening. "This is reminiscent of Sweden's stand during World War II, when [it] had failed to intervene as well."
Lieberman plans to submit an official complaint about the matter to his Swedish counterpart, Carl Bildt, according to Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.
The Swedish ambassador, Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier, rejected the article on Wednesday, a day after it was published in the newspaper Aftonbladet under the headline, "Our sons are being stripped of their organs."
In her statement, Bonnier called it "as shocking and appalling to us Swedes as it is to Israeli citizens," and noted that Sweden's Embassy "cannot but clearly distance itself" from the report.
But Sweden's Foreign Ministry refused to condemn the article, saying that Bonnier's comments reflected the embassy's position and not that of the Swedish government. Both Bonnier and the ministry noted that Sweden has a free press -- which Bonnier said comes with "a certain responsibility" that "falls on the editor-in-chief of any given newspaper."