What started as a false and malicious report in a Swedish newspaper that Israeli soldiers were harvesting organs from Palestinians has mushroomed into a global conspiracy theory alleging a Jewish plot to harvest organs from Algerian children. 

The shocking story alleging that Jews abducted Algerian children and smuggled them into Morocco to harvest their organs is being widely circulated by various media outlets around the world and on the Internet.

The fabricated story, which appears to have first been published in the Arabic-language Algerian daily El-Khabar on September 6, has been reported by some major media outlets such as Al Jazeera, and subsequently picked up by dozens of other news Web sites and Blogs around the world, including anti-Semitic sites that appreciate its propaganda value.

The story, which also seems to be increasingly disseminated via email, is a modern variation of the anti-Jewish blood libel. It claims that Interpol, the international police organization, has revealed the existence of "a Jewish gang" that was "involved in the abduction of children from Algeria and trafficking of their organs." The story is based an alleged statement by a Mustafa Khayatti, who is identified as either an Algerian official or the head of an Algerian NGO.  Khayatti claims that, "…Jewish organ trafficking gangs…remain active in several Arab countries."

According to the story, the abduction of children in Algeria is linked to arrests made in New York and New Jersey at the end of July, in which several Jewish men were among the 44 arrested in connection to an investigation into illegal organ trafficking and political corruption.

An English version of the story appeared on the Web site of Press TV, a state-funded Iranian TV news channel. Al Watan, an Arab-American newspaper published out of Anaheim, California, was among the first to publish the story in the U.S. It has also appeared in The Palestine Chronicle, a Washington-based online publication that often prints anti-Semitic conspiratorial stories, and Islam Online, an online publication connected to Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi.

The malicious story follows the publication of an article in Aftonbladet, the Swedish daily newspaper, which accused Israeli soldiers of kidnapping Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. The article, "They plunder the organs of our sons," written by Donald Boström, was applauded in editorials in the online editions of leading satellite news networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. Like the Algerian story, Boström's article has similarly circulated around the world and generated a troubling response.

In the U.S., several groups, including If Americans Knew and We Hold These Truths, an Arizona-based Christian anti-Semitic group, have endorsed a "Petition to Defend Press Freedom, Investigate Possible Israeli War Crimes" in support of Boström. It called for an "investigation into allegations that Israelis have removed organs from Palestinians." Another group, American Muslims for Palestine, issued a statement demanding that the U.S. and UN investigate "Israeli culpability in the New Jersey Rabbis case" and Boström's allegations "concerning illegally harvesting Palestinian organs."

The allegation that Jews murder non-Jews to use their blood for ritual or medicinal purposes dates back to the Middle Ages and has spawned many variants over time. Jewish law expressly prohibits the consumption of any blood. Nevertheless it was alleged that Jews drank Christian blood on Passover and mixed it into matzah, the unleavened bread eaten on that holiday. During medieval times two popes expressly declared such claims to have been fabricated. Nevertheless, instances of what has come to be known as the "blood libel" have persisted into modern times.  Blood libels have frequently led to mob violence and pogroms, and have occasionally led to the decimation of entire Jewish communities.

Famous blood libels in the past two centuries took place in Damascus in 1840; Kishinev in 1903; Kiev in 1913; Massena, New York in 1928; and Kielce, Poland, in 1946.  More recently, the claim that Jews harvest blood and organs from non-Jews has been published in books and disseminated in the media, especially in Arab and Muslim countries.