Viral post claims Netanyahu sought legal approval, igniting speculation about Israel’s organ harvesting

Viral post claims Netanyahu sought legal approval, igniting speculation about Israel’s organ harvesting
Binyamin Netanyahu in court during his corruption trial, prior to his third testimony day, seems to be talking with his attorney, Amit Hadad, with his back to the camera (Wikimedia Commons)

Online allegations about Israeli organ harvesting have resurfaced after a viral post claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought legal approval in the 1990s to take organs from deceased Palestinians for transplantation.

Reposted from Middle East Monitor, February 11, 2026

Online allegations about Israeli organ harvesting have resurfaced after a viral post claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought legal approval in the 1990s to take organs from deceased Palestinians for transplantation. 

The claim, widely shared on social media, cites documented admissions concerning the removal of organs without consent at Israel’s state forensic institute. Those earlier revelations detailed how corneas, skin, heart valves and bones were taken during autopsies without authorisation — a practice Israeli official later acknowledged and said had ended.

The latest discussion was triggered by a widely shared tweet claiming that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considered policies in the 1990s relating to the use of Palestinian bodies for medical purposes. 

“Taking organs from dead terrorists for transplantation into Israelis? I’ll check if the idea is legally feasible,” Netanyahu is reported saying according to an image of an official Israeli government document shared on X.  The Israeli prime minister did not reject the proposal — he rolled it (or promised to roll it) over to the legal experts.

Netanyahu was reported to have expressed interest in the idea, writing that he would examine whether it was “applicable under Israeli law.” Though the document appears official, the authenticity and context of the document circulating online have not been independently verified.

Social media users subsequently questioned whether this marked the beginning of a policy of organ harvesting.

The renewed allegations draw on confirmed admissions by Israeli officials that, during the 1990s, organs were removed at Israel’s main state forensic facility, the L Greenberg National Institute of Forensic Medicine — commonly known as the Abu Kabir forensic institute — in Tel Aviv. 

The institute, which conducts autopsies and provides forensic services for the Israeli state, was found to have removed organs from the bodies of Palestinians, Israelis and foreign workers without their families’ consent. Authorities later acknowledged that corneas, skin, heart valves and bones had been taken during autopsies without authorization, describing the practice as having occurred years earlier and insisting it had been stopped. 

Although these admissions related to unauthorized organ retention rather than a declared harvesting policy, they continue to fuel speculation about the broader treatment of Palestinian bodies.

Human rights organizations estimate that Israel continues to hold the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians. The policy, combined with recent reports of unidentified human remains being returned to Gaza in sealed bags following months of military operations, has intensified suspicion online.

Mary Turfah, a writer and surgical resident trained in anthropology at Yale and Middle Eastern South Asian and African Studies at Columbia, writing recently in The Baffler, examined what she described as the political management of Palestinian bodies.  

Turfah argues that the treatment of Palestinian bodies is not incidental but structural. She describes how Israel has retained bodies, buried them in numbered graves and delayed their return to families, framing these practices as part of a wider system of control. The power exercised over Palestinians, she suggests, does not end with death. Instead, the state continues to determine when and how bodies are released, identified or buried.

On organ removal specifically, Turfah situates it within a wider pattern of state control. She refers to past admissions that organs were taken without family consent and treats that episode as part of a longer history in which Palestinian bodies are treated as available to the state even after death.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Alison Weir reported on this in detail in 2009.

Additionally:

The Middle East Monitor is a not-for-profit press monitoring organization and lobbying group that emerged in mid-2009. MEMO is largely focused on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict but writes about other issues in the Middle East

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