Israeli pharmaceutical companies may have stopped testing on animals after years of pressure by animal rights groups, but it has now been revealed that Israeli authorities issue permits to Big Pharma companies allowing them to carry out tests on unwilling Palestinian and Arab prisoners.

Speaking at Columbia University in New York City, Israeli Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian said that she became aware of the inhumane practice while carrying out a research project for the Hebrew University in Israel.

The Hebrew University lecturer also revealed that Israeli military firms are testing weapons on Palestinian children and carry out these tests in the Palestinian neighbourhoods of occupied Jerusalem.

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

In her talk, entitled “Disturbing Spaces – Violent Technologies in Palestinian Jerusalem”, the professor 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.”

Middle East Monitor reports: Last week, Israeli authorities refused to hand over the body of Fares Baroud, who passed away inside Israeli prisons after suffering from a number of diseases.

His family fear that he could have been used for such tests and Israel is afraid this could be revealed through forensic investigations.

5,000 tests on Palestinian prisoners

In July 1997, Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported remarks for Dalia Itzik, chairman of a parliamentary committee, acknowledged that the Israeli Ministry of Health had given pharmaceutical firms permits to test their new drugs of 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 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 confirming past reports about organ harvesting by the occupying power.”