A murder waiting to happen

[Englander]

By Danny Rubinstein

"Nesikh yerushalayim" ("The Prince of Jerusalem") by Ofer Regev, Porat Publishing, 278 pages, NIS 63

Just after 5 P.M. on Friday afternoon, September 17, 1948, during the final months of the War of Independence, a jeep blocked the small cavalcade of cars in which the United Nations mediator for Palestine, Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte, was riding. Bernadotte was on his way from the office of the UN High Commissioner in Armon Hanatziv, east of Jerusalem's Talpiot neighborhood, to the Rehavia home of the military governor of West Jerusalem, Dov Joseph. The cavalcade screeched to a halt on Palmach Street (before it was called by that name), on the edge of Katamon - which was empty of Arabs by this time - in front of what is today apartment building No. 17.

Three young men, only identified decades later, leaped out of the jeep. Two of them, Yitzhak Ben Moshe and Avraham Steinberg, shot at the tires of the UN vehicles. The third, Yehoshua Cohen, opened the door of Bernadotte's car and shot him at close range. The bullets also hit a French officer who was sitting beside him, Colonel Andre Gerot. Both were killed.

Within minutes, the whole thing was over. The assassins fled, with a fourth accomplice, Meshullam Makover, in the driver's seat. No one was ever brought to trial. An organization called Hazit Hamoledet (Homeland Front) took responsibility for the act. Actually this was a cover name for a cell affiliated with the pre-state underground militia - the Lehi - in Jerusalem, under the command of Yehoshua Zetler.

Dozens of books, research studies and articles have been published about this shocking episode over the years. Many have tried their hand at analyzing the dramatic political assassination of a scion of the Swedish royal family. Now Ofer Regev has jumped on the bandwagon with a book that examines the events from the perspective of the two main characters: the assassin, Yehoshua Cohen (Regev, like many other Israelis who have written on the subject, avoids calling him a "murderer") and his victim, Count Bernadotte.

Regev describes Cohen and Bernadotte in lively prose, but makes it clear, almost from the very first page, that he detests Bernadotte. On the other hand, he is a supporter, even a fan, of Cohen. While that may be legitimate, the book is riddled with inaccuracies, large and small. This is unfortunate, considering that the author has consulted a very long list of sources and quotes from them freely. The errors in the book could easily have been avoided. Regev writes, for example, that Moshe Sharett spent his childhood in the village of Ein Siniya, north of Ramallah, where he was friendly with the neighbor's son, Amin al-Husseini, later the mufti of Jerusalem. That is highly unlikely. Ein Siniya may have been the village of the wealthy Al-Husseini clan, but not the branch of the family the mufti belonged to, and it is doubtful he ever spent time here.

More at;
Haaretz

[Englander]

1. Mention of Folke Bernadotte in another book review;

Last update - 02:42 12/11/2004
A lifelong death sentence

By Ruth Almog

"Inge" by Inge Joseph Bleier and David E. Gumpert, William B. Eerdman's Publishing Company, Michigan, 291 pages, $24; "The Jewish Women of Ravensbruck Concentration Camp" by Rochelle G. Saidel, The University of Wisconsin Press, 278 pages, $29.95.

What do Inge Joseph's autobiographical story and Rochelle G. Saidel's study on the Ravensbruck concentration camp for women have in common? Time and gender. Saidel's book, which is the candidate for an important prize in the United States, brings to light for the first time the stories of the Jewish women who were imprisoned in Ravensbruck.

Ravensbruck was a concentration camp for women of different nationalities, which was located 80 kilometers north of Berlin. Apparently, during the five years of its existence, 132,000 women were imprisoned there. Of them, only 12,000 survived at the end of the war. Twenty thousand were sent to be killed at other camps, especially in euthanasia installations, and 91,000 just didn't make it. When the Soviet army liberated the Ravensbruck camp, only 3,000 sick and dying prisoners were found there. At least 7,500 women had been evacuated from there earlier, to Sweden, by Count Folke Bernadotte, who headed the Swedish Red Cross.

Count Bernadotte endeavored to save Jews to the best of his ability, but in the end he was assassinated by Jews in the land of Israel. When you think about Bernadotte's projects involving finding refuge for the Jews of Denmark, sending 70,000 food packages to Jews in the camps and arranging convoys of white buses that took people out of the camps to Sweden; when you think about his efforts to mediate between the Israelis and the Palestinians and about how he succeeded in achieving a truce for one month in the War of Independence and suggested plans for peace that both sides rejected; and when you think about how he was assassinated, together with his French aide as a result of his aim to bring about peace in the land of Israel - it is impossible not to be disgusted and not to see how little has changed since then. Bernadotte, a man who was among the most worthy of the title "Righteous Gentile," was murdered - just like former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin - by the concept that peace is unthinkable.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=500609