‘Hateful occupation’: Israel returns Palestinians’ mutilated bodies and skeletal remains in boxes to Gaza

Israel has a long history of stealing the organs of Palestinians.

15 unidentified bodies were buried in Deir al-Balah on Friday.

Continuing their ritualistic humiliation of Palestinians in life and death, the Israelis sent the mutilated bodies of 54 martyrs into the Gaza Strip on Thursday. Of these bodies, only about a dozen were intact. Along with the bodies came 66 boxes containing unidentified human remains. Photos published by the Gaza Health Ministry showed morbid images of human body parts, including skulls and other bones.

Dr. Muneer al-Boursh, the Director-General of the Gaza Health Ministry, termed the ongoing macabre Israeli practice a “humiliation inflicted on both the dead and the living.”

Dr. al-Boursh revealed that the bodies bore marks of inhuman torture, which was also the case with around 360 bodies that the Israelis sent into Gaza last year. Some of the bodies of Palestinian martyrs sent last year were still in blindfolds, had missing fingers, and bore marks of all kinds of horrific torture.

Families with missing relatives had to sit through painful photos of mutilated and mangled bodies in order to identify them. It led to excruciatingly painful journeys for many in search of closure, compounding their heartbreak and loss.

The excruciating pain of identifying the dead in Gaza

Many bodies were so badly disfigured that it was impossible to determine their identities, forcing the authorities in Gaza to bury dozens of them without identification in mass graves.

Gaza authorities publish shocking images of Israeli abuse as dozens of unidentified bodies are buried

Months later, the Israelis have repeated the same pattern of behaviour, sending pieces of human bone and other remains spread across 66 boxes without identifying any of them. Moreover, since they restrict DNA identification kits from entering the Gaza Strip, despite the supposed ongoing ceasefire, the health authorities in the besieged enclave have no way to determine the identities of the dead.

“These bodies truly are not normal bodies; they have signs of torture and signs of detention and signs of gunshots at close range,” Dr. al-Boursh told Al Jazeera Mubasher. “And there was a body we saw that had been mauled by dogs, leaving nothing but bones. Truly the scenes were difficult.”

He added: “Accompanying these bodies were 66 boxes, and we are astonished by these boxes; inside them were plastic bags containing body parts and human organs. This is a skull and this is a pelvis and this is a bone and this… the scene was painful.”

Body parts of Palestinians sent by Israel into Gaza in 66 boxes.

Dr. al-Boursh said that the Israelis attempted to deliberately erase the identities of the bodies, making them impossible to identify.

“What’s noticeable is that all the bodies had their fingers amputated,” he said. “This is a deliberate attempt to erase identity, to erase memory, to humiliate the living before the dead. When a person receives a bag of body parts, how will they identify them?

“Even during wars this is not a proper procedure. This is a complete moral and humanitarian crime in all aspects.”

Dr. al-Boursh revealed that the bodies of Palestinians had been medically dissected to harvest organs and were subsequently stuffed with gauze and cotton.

Source.

“Israeli foreign minister in a statement said that we obtained a Guinness World Record for kidney donation,” said Dr. al-Boursh. “Where did he get these kidneys? These are the kidneys of our sons that you stole from the bodies. Where did the occupation get this large number of kidneys to donate to the world to obtain entry into Guinness World Record? These are the bodies of our martyrs who are more noble than all of us and today we received some of them disfigured and stolen from the inside. This is what the occupation did: it stole the internal organs and stuffed the abdomen with bags and cotton and gauze. This is what the occupation does with bodies of our martyred sons after it steals all the organs and then tells the world that it obtained this award and entered the Guinness World Record.

“We are facing a hateful occupation.”

Israel has a long history of stealing the organs of Palestinians. Just as every Israeli depravity witnessed in Gaza over the past 28 months has been sanctioned by leading Jewish authorities in Israel, the stealing of organs also has religious sanction.

In 1996, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh, the influential leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch sect boasted about the “infinite value” of a Jewish life over a non-Jewish one, which justified stealing the goyim’s organ for the benefit of the Jew. “If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him?” he asked rhetorically before answering: “The Torah would probably permit that, Jewish life has an infinite value.”

Dr. al-Boursh — whose cousin, Dr. Adnan al-Boursh, a beloved and renowned orthopaedic surgeon in the Gaza Strip, was abducted in the early days of the genocide and subsequently raped and tortured to death in their rape-and-torture dungeons, with his body withheld to this day — wrote a moving post capturing the pain of Palestinians as they are denied dignity by their genocidal occupiers even in death:

Gaza Receives the Remains of Its Sons and Daughters… and the World Remains Silent

This is not an ordinary image,
nor a fleeting moment in a news cycle.
These are the remains of human beings.

Separated bones.
Limbs without names.

Bodies that did not return as they left their homes,
but as violence intended — to erase them.

A while ago, fifty-four bodies arrived at Al-Shifa Medical Complex,
accompanied by sixty-six boxes containing human remains,
released through the Red Cross.

But what is truly being handed over?
Bodies?
Or what remains of human dignity?

Today, we stand before sealed boxes,
searching inside them for the faces of our sons and daughters,
with no forensic tools,
no DNA testing,
and no minimum medical or investigative capacity
to identify or document them with dignity.

How do we restore names to bodies
reduced to numbers on bags and containers?
How do families receive their loved ones
when identity is erased, bones are shattered,
and the body is violated even after death?

This is not ordinary death.
It is a violation beyond death —
an assault on human dignity,
an attempt to erase memory,
and a humiliation inflicted on both the dead and the living.

Returning human remains in this condition
is not a wartime circumstance,
nor a military procedure.
It is a moral and humanitarian crime,
and a blatant violation of international law
meant to protect human dignity in life and in death.

We are not asking for the impossible.
We are not seeking privilege.
We are demanding a fundamental human right:
That a human being be returned as a human being,
that the body be preserved,
that identity be respected,
and that dignity be upheld.

When the world remains silent before such a scene,
it is not Gaza alone that is humiliated —
silence itself becomes complicit in the crime.

Israel continues to withhold the bodies of more than 700 documented Palestinian victims. This includes 96 who were killed in detention, 77 children under the age of 18, and ten women.

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