Israel tests medicines, weapons on Palestinian prisoners

Israeli occupation authorities issued permission to large scale pharmaceutical firms to carry out tests on Palestinian and Arab prisoners, according to a revelation made by the Israeli Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian on February 19.

The Hebrew University lecturer also revealed that the Israeli military firms are testing weapons on Palestinian children and have carried out these tests on the Palestinian neighbourhoods of occupied Jerusalem, Felesteen.ps reported.

Speaking in Columbia University in New York City, Shalhoub-Kevorkian said that she collected the data while carrying out a research project for the Hebrew University.

"Palestinian spaces are laboratories," she said adding "The invention of products and services of state-sponsored security corporations are fueled by long-term curfews and Palestinian oppression by the Israeli army."

During her talk, entitled "Disturbing Spaces – Violent Technologies in Palestinian Jerusalem", the professor further added: "They check for which bombs to use, gas bombs or stink bombs;  whether to put plastic sacks or cloth sacks; to beat us with their rifles or to kick us with boots."

In mid February, Israeli authorities refused to hand over the body of Fares Baroud, who passed away inside an Israeli prison after suffering from a number of diseases. His family said that he might have been used for such tests and Israel is afraid beacuse forensic investigation would reveal the truth, Middle East Monitor reports.

Earlier in July 1997, Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported the remarks of Dalia Itzik, chairman of a parliamentary committee, who acknowledged that the Israeli Ministry of Health has given pharmaceutical firms permits to test their new drugs on inmates, noting that 5,000 tests had already been carried out.

Robrecht Vanderbeeken, the cultural secretary of Belgium's ACOD trade union, warned in August 2018 that the population of the Gaza Strip is being "starved to death, poisoned, and children are kidnapped and murdered for their organs."

This follows previous warnings from Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour who said the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces were returned with missing corneas and other organs, further confirmed past reports about organ harvesting by the occupying power.