On Sweden, Israel, art, and assassination - yellowtimes.org

[Wonk]

By Rannie Amiri
YellowTimes.org Guest Columnist

(snip)

What is most ironic about this whole affair, and makes the protestations to the Swedish government by the Israeli diplomat seem quite out of place, is the direct involvement of a former Israeli Prime Minister in the assassination of a Swedish diplomat.

Fifty-four year-old Count Folke Bernadotte, nephew of King Gustavus V of Sweden, was appointed in 1948 as mediator to Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in the capacity as its official representative. He was immediately assigned the difficult task of negotiating a truce between the Arab states and the newly created state of Israel, after the outbreak of hostilities in the region stemming from the partition of Palestine.

Bernadotte was successful in implementing a fleeting 30-day truce between the parties, but he ultimately came to the conclusion that the U.N. partition plan as fashioned was impractical and untenable. He, instead, advocated boundaries be redrawn similar to those prior to the partition, and encouraged the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Negev desert and Jerusalem, which he thought should be under Jordanian rule. He also criticized the aggressive behavior of the Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem.

A peaceful solution to the conflict, however, was not on the agenda of the Zionist founders of Israel, who sought to expand the frontiers of their state as far as possible and to establish complete control of not only Jerusalem, but all of Palestine. One such Zionist organization, initially created to fight the British mandate of Palestine, was called the LEHI (Lohamei Herut Israel - Fighters for the Freedom of Israel), also known as the Stern Gang. Meeting all of today's criteria in qualifying as a terrorist organization, the LEHI/Stern Gang ensured Bernadotte failed in his quest to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, for he was brutally assassinated by them on September 17, 1948.

This assassination was orchestrated by none other than one Yitzhak Shamir, who would later become the Israeli Prime Minister in 1983. Although widely implicated for his direct involvement, he was never tried for his crime and a thorough investigation by the Israeli government at the behest of Sweden was never seriously pursued. The first of many rebuffs of the United Nations by Israel in its failure to apprehend Shamir thus occurred shortly after its creation, and would be a harbinger of the general disregard Israel would hold for the international body and its officials thereafter.

It is interesting to note that Bernadotte was head of the Swedish Red Cross during World War II, where his work through the International Red Cross was reported to have saved 20,000 lives from Nazi concentration camps, apparently an irrelevant fact to Shamir when the task at hand was to guarantee his diplomatic efforts in Palestine came to an end.

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[papau]

1. "Bernadotte was head of the Swedish Red Cross" -explains hate toward

the Red Star of David, and Swedish blocking worldwide co-operation, and only endorsing red crescent and red cross cooperation.

or does it?

sound more like bias

but that is just my opinion.

I did like "the U.N. partition plan as fashioned was impractical and untenable. He, instead, advocated boundaries be redrawn similar to those prior to the partition" -since contiguous Jewish state borders prior to partition were never drawn. Seema he just want Jews out of Jerusalem, with the trans-Jordan area become mostly Jordan - a possible solution in 1947 if the Arabs had agreed - but not in 1948 after the Arab armies had been stopped by those pesky Jews.

so why post this?

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Wonk]

3. There are so many experts down here that I knew someone would point out

any factual inaccuracies in the article if there were any.

[brainshrub]

4. Well this article must be false in it's entirety,

because, as everyone knows, Israel has only killed terrorists or people living near terrorists.

Obviously Count Folke Bernadotte was a dangerous terrorist, otherwise he would never have been assassinated. (Other terrorists include the sailors of the USS Liberty in 1967.)

/sarcasm