60 Years Later
By STANLEY HELLER
CounterPunch
"....This year September 17th is the 60th anniversary of the anniversary of the assassination of Swedish Count Folk Bernadotte. He was the Vice-President of the Swedish Red Cross during World War II.....
Wikipedia states: “Following the 1947 UN Partition Plan, on 20 May 1948, Folke Bernadotte was appointed the United Nations' mediator in Palestine, the first official mediator in the UN's history. In this capacity, he succeeded in achieving a truce in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and laid the groundwork for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.”....
Enter the Stern Gang (or the Fighters for Freedom of Israel as they called themselves). They were one group of what were called “Revisionist” Zionists. They were opposed to the Ben-Gurion Labour Party types. They were so fanatical in their demand for a Jewish state (from the Nile to the Euphrates) that in the 1940’s they came up with a novel idea about foes of the Jews. Hitler was a “persecutor” of Jews, but the “enemy” of Jews was the power that occupied Palestine, the British. There would always be persecutors until Jews vanquished “the enemy” and took over their rightful turf. So logically the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel had to ally itself against the British and with Hitler!
Unfortunately I’m not making this up......"
"Although it would be 30 years before any of its personnel admitted it, the "madness" was perpetrated by the most extreme of the Jewish nationalist underground groups, Lehi, more commonly known to the British as the Stern Gang, ordered by a three-man leadership which included the future Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir. What cost the life of the count who ran the Swedish Red Cross during the Second World War and was the nephew of King Gustav V, was not the two Arab-Jewish truces he had managed to negotiate – the second of which was close to collapse when he was killed. It was the longer-term peace plan which sought, however vainly and perhaps naively, to tackle the very issues which still lie at the heart of the world's most intractable conflict today: borders, Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israels-forgotten-hero-the-assassination-of-count-bernadotte--and-the-death-of-peace-934094.html
IN MEMORY OF COUNT FOLKE BERNADOTEE, UN mediator, murdered on 17 September 1948.
ReplyDeleteOn 20 May 1948, the United Nations appointed as first official mediator in its history, Folke Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg, of the noble Swedish family of Bernadotte. He was assigned to Palestine. Among his activities during the first Palestinian war of 1948 was to pave the way for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to assist
Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. In negotiations with the Israelis he worked for recognition of the Palestinian refugees' right of return. In particular, on 17 June 1948 he requested that the Israelis enable the return of 300,000 refugees. On 17 September 1948, together with UN observer Colonel André Serot, he was shot by militant leaders of the Jewish terrorist group Lehi, the so-called Stern Gang. The reason for the murder was Bernadotte's public declaration that the Palestinian refugees must be allowed to return to their homeland. His proposals for the solution of the refugee problem were the basis for Resolution 194, passed on 11 December 1948 by the United Nations
General Assembly, in which the right of return of refugees on both sides was established.
A few months after the assassination, despite the overwhelming evidence of their guilt, the perpetrators were granted general amnesty by the Israeli government.
(from: Wikipedia)
In 1863, when Henri Dunant started the work of the Red Cross, he used as organizational motto: Inter arma caritas amidst weapons (i.e. in war), mercy. Later events, not least the experience of World War II, revised the motto to: Post armis caritas – after weapons, mercy. The time will come when mankind can say: Pro armis caritas – instead of weapons, mercy. (from: Folke Bernadotte, An Stelle von Waffen. Verlagsanstalt Hermann Klemm, Freiburg i.Br., ca. 1950, page 179;
translation by Clarissa Hall)
Thank you for you continued support,
Iyad Burnat- Head of Popular Commitee in Bilin
Head of Friends of Freedom and Justice in Bilin
Email- ffj.bilin@yahoo. com
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