Swedish photographer Donald Boström made waves in August this year when he abandoned his career as a photographer and instead tried his hand at journalism.
It was a mistake. He does not write coherently, he fails in the elementary ABC of checking on sources, he is subjective and unable to be objective, and his pro-Palestinian agenda shines through the few two-syllable words he succeeds in spelling correctly with the help of his trusty dictionary.
He wrote an article accusing the IDF of a systematic policy of killing Palestinian Arabs to supply a purported Israeli organ-trafficking industry, weaving his allegations together with a number of unrelated, overtly racist anti-Semitic accusations against Jews worldwide.
In early November, Boström travelled to Israel to defend his allegations. So certain was he of the treatment he would receive in the only democratic state in the Middle East that he hired a bodyguard to protect him 24 hours a day during his visit.
He needn’t have bothered. This was, after all, Israel, not an Arab dictatorship. As is customary in any democracy, there were demonstrations against his racist views, but he was allowed to defend his views on TV and he left the country without incident. His bodyguard had the easiest assignment of his entire professional life.
Boström’s civilised reception in Israel surprised him. Brought up on a decades-old Swedish diet of vilification of the Jewish state and of Jews in general, Boström today announced that he is reassessing his account of alleged official Israeli involvement in organ trafficking.
About time too, bearing in mind there is no story to pursue. He might, however, wish to pursue his enquiries on organ trafficking in Jordan, in Iran, among Palestinian Arabs, and in Egypt, where the practice is rife. In these Arab societies, the illegal trade in organs is a lively one indeed – pardon the pun.
Of course, Donald Boström may not survive any journalistic investigation into organ trafficking in the Arab and Muslim worlds, bodyguard or not. People asking awkward questions tend to be blown up, with some rather terminal side-effects. The unlucky ones tend to have their throats slit and the procedure televised and put on YouTube for other would-be surgeons in the Islamist world to emulate. So don’t expect to see any articles on the subject bearing Donald Boström’s signature any time soon.
It’s good that Donald Boström has had a change of heart. Perhaps there has been some organ trafficking, after all.
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