thegreatdivide wrote on Mar 9
th, 2023 at 1:04pm:
Count Bernadotte, the UN mediator in Palestine reported in September 1948 that "the exodus of the Palestinian Arabs resulted from panic created by fighting in their communities, by rumours concerning real or alleged acts of terrorism, or expulsion. Almost the whole of the Arab population fled or was expelled from the area under Jewish occupation."[12]
Count Bernadotte was assassinated on September 17 1948, near Jerusalem, by Jewish terrorists:
Yitzhak Yazernitzsky, better known today as Yitzhak Shamir, and Israel Sheib met at the Tel Aviv apartment of Nathan Friedman-Yellin in early September of 1948. They compromised the executive committee of the "fighters for the freedom of Israel," known to Israelis by its Hebrew acronym, Lehi, and to the British soldiers it had been killing throughout World War II as the Stern Gang. Over fruit and wine, Sheib opined that if the world listened to the latest proposals of the U.N. mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, the Jews would lose the foothold they had seized in Jerusalem, which Israel wanted as its capital, and which the U.N. proposed should remain under international control.
The three had previously directed many acts of terrorism against Palestinians and against the British administration, including the 1944 murder in Cairo of Lord Moyne, the British Minister of State in the Middle East.
It was now the turn of Count Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross and a member of that country's royal family. The three sent their orders to Yehoshua Zetler, the Stern Gang commander in Jerusalem, who, with his deputy, Yehoshua Cohen, and Stanley Goldfoot, his intelligence officer, set out to plan and carry out the Count's murder.
Count Bernadotte, an officer in the Swedish calvary, had passed his life in service to others. He was considered by his colleagues to be impeccably neutral in trying to find a solution to Palestine's sorrows.
Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sherett pledged to the principle American official in Israel that "we are setting up the most rigid search for the assassins and their accomplices and we shall execute justice at the moment guilt is proved." None of those arrested, however, spent more than a few months in jail.
Yitzhak Yazernitsky went on to become a Mossad director of operations. After a name change, as Yitzhak Shamir, he now serves as prime minister of Israel.
- Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 1990