link
May 25, 2009
YEHOSHUA ZETTLER - STERN GANG LEADER
15-7-1917 — 20-5-2009
Bernadotte, a member of the Swedish royal family, was sent to the Middle East by the UN to mediate between Israelis and Arabs over the future of disputed Palestine.
He recommended revising the boundaries envisaged by the UN Partition Plan of November 1947 to allow Palestinian refugees back to their homes, and suggested that the UN should take over control of Jerusalem. The plan was anathema to many Israelis, and the Stern Gang in Jerusalem concluded that the best way to prevent its implementation was to kill the mediator.
The gang's leaders — among them Yisrael Eldad, Nathan Yelin-Mor and Yitzhak Shamir (a future prime minister of Israel) — met in an apartment in Tel Aviv on September 10, 1948, to discuss the assassination. Zettler, who had come from Jerusalem, waited nervously in an adjoining room. Shamir later noted: "The idea was conceived in Jerusalem by Lehi members. Our opinion was asked, and we offered no opposition."
Having secured this tacit agreement, Zettler sped back to Jerusalem to pick his team of gunmen. One of them, Meshulam Makover, recalled later: "Zettler came to my room at Camp Dror, and within a casual conversation asked: 'What is your opinion regarding the liquidation of Bernadotte?' I did not hide my enthusiasm. Two or three days later Zettler came back and said: 'We have decided to do it. You will be on the operations team'."
Zettler also recruited Yehoshua Cohen, the man who would eventually pull the trigger.
Bernadotte arrived in Jerusalem on September 17, accompanied by General Aage Lundstrom, who later wrote: "We drove rapidly through the Jewish lines without incident … In the Katamon Quarter we were held up by a Jewish army-type Jeep, placed in a roadblock and filled with men in Jewish army uniforms. At the same time I saw a man (Yehoshua Cohen) running from the Jeep; he put a tommy gun through the open window on my side of the car and fired point blank at Count Bernadotte (who) fell forward. There was a considerable amount of blood on his clothes."
Zettler never regretted his part in the murder: "When we demonstrated in front of (Bernadotte) and told him 'Go away from our Jerusalem, go back to Stockholm', he did not respond. So we had no choice."
Zettler was born at Kfar Saba, a settlement north of Tel Aviv, and was four years old when riots broke out between Jews and Arabs. The Zettlers' home was destroyed and had to be rebuilt.
At age 14 he joined Haganah, the largest underground organisation in Palestine, then under the British Mandate. In 1933 he joined Haganah B, which in 1937 became Irgun.
As one of Irgun's leading commanders, Zettler took part in the attack on Bir Adas, the first organised Jewish assault on an Arab village in Palestine.
In June 1940 Irgun split over policy differences, Zettler joining the breakaway group. This was Lehi, or the Stern Gang, which was to pursue ruthless acts of terrorism against the British throughout World War II.
Also in September 1940, Zettler led an operation in which money was stolen from a bank in Tel Aviv. In May the next year, he was arrested by British police investigating the robbery, but escaped from custody.
He was then appointed the Stern Gang's chief of operations in Palestine. He remained on the run, and was often reduced to sleeping on park benches. When winter arrived he returned to his flat in Tel Aviv, where, on December 2, he was arrested by the British. He was sentenced to 15 years' jail for his role in the bank robbery.
At the central jail in Jerusalem, Zettler became involved in a riot, and was transferred to Acre Fortress, a maximum-security prison.
There he immediately began to plan his escape, and on May 4, 1947, he was one of the leaders as 41 men — all members of Irgun and Lehi — got away after the prison doors had been destroyed by explosives.
After the partition of Palestine in 1947, the activities of Stern Gang were concentrated on Jerusalem. In April 1948, Zettler took part in the joint assault on the small Arab village of Deir Yassin by the Stern Gang and Irgun, headed by another future Israeli PM, Menachem Begin.
Between 110 and 120 villagers were killed in what became known as a massacre.
Following the assassination of Bernadotte, the Stern Gang was disbanded in Jerusalem.
Zettler, whose nickname was Falach (Peasant in Arabic), remained politically right-wing and suspicious of Arabs and foreigners. He believed Israel should retain all the occupied territories. In his later years he lived in Tel Aviv, and owned a petrol station in Jaffa.
In 1948 he married Bella Shechter, a fellow member of Lehi, on a rooftop in Jerusalem in the presence of armed guards. They had two daughters.
TELEGRAPH
No comments:
Post a Comment