Hidden History: The UN Mediator Assassinated by Jewish Terrorists in 1948

Killing the Count – Part 2 Mediation and Assassination

Al Jazeera (2014)

Film Review

Part 2 begins by tracing the development of Palestine’s Jewish terrorist organizations opposed to British occupation. The first, the Haganah, was created in the late 1930s when Britain severely restricted immigration of European Jews to Palestine. The Irgun and Stern Gang (aka Lehi) were more militant splinter groups of Haganah. Although all three committed bombings, assassinations and other terrorist atrocities against British troops and Arab civilians, the Stern Gang was by far the most violent. Itzak Shamir, a prominent member, would become prime minister of Israel in 1977.

In November 1947, ongoing Jewish terrorism led the newly formed UN General Assembly to recommend the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish regions. Jewish extremists rejected this proposal – their goal was to capture all of Palestine (aka “Greater Israel” as defined in Biblical terms). Haganah responded to partition by commencing military operations against the UN-assigned Arab areas.

Continued Jewish terrorism ultimate forced British troops to withdraw from Palestine on May 14, 1948. Although technically Palestine was now ruled by UN mandate, Jewish militants proclaimed territories under their control as the State of Israel. Within hours, the Egyptian air force bombed the Jewish-controlled regions, and troops from Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Iraq crossed into Palestine.

Based on his skillful negotiation with the Nazis to free concentration camp prisoners (see Jewish Terrorism and the Creation of the State of Israel/), the UN Security Council appointed Swedish diplomat Folke Bernodote to negotiate a truce and eventual peace in Palestine. It was Bernodotte who invented the “shuttle diplomacy” that would make Nixon security advisor Henry Kissinger so famous.

Bernodotte visited Israel and all the Arab capitols multiple time to draw up peace terms. The initial conditions he set called for Palestine’s Jewish and Arab territories to be contiguous (unlike the General Assembly partition, which created isolated Jewish and Arab regions across Palestine), the right of Arab refugees to return to land Jews had confiscated and for Jerusalem to be in the Arab-controlled state.

The latter was a fatal error* that Bernadotte subsequently rectified by calling for Jerusalem to be a UN-administered zone.

It was too late. The Stern Gang brutally assassinated him within hours after his final arrival in Israel.

Although members of Ben-Gurion’s government could personally identify the killers, they were never brought to justice.

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*Obviously Bernodotte never attended a Seder (Passover celebration), in which the pronouncement “next year in Jerusalem” concludes the ritual.

 

1936-1947: British Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine

Al-Nakba: the Palestinian Catastrophe Part 2 (1936-1947)

Al Jazeera (2013)

Film Review

The Palestinian “revolt” of 1936 took (see Palestine’s 200 Year History of Ethnic Cleansing) took three years of British brutality to crush. Declaring martial law in 1937, Britain forced five members of the Arab High Committee (which ruled Palestine) to the Seychelles. The other four fled to Lebanon, fearing arrest or imprisonment or worse. Many Palestinian civilians were arrested without charge and held in concentration camps. Britain also armed Jewish paramilitary groups to perform night time raids on Palestinian families with the assistance of British volunteers.

In all 5,000 Palestinians were killed between 1936-39 and 14,000 wounded. Hundreds of Palestinian homes were demolished as collective punishment. By 1940, one-tenth of the male population of Palestine was dead or in prison or exile – leaving the Palestinian resistance movement virtually leaderless.

During World War II, Palestinian Jews were allowed to enlist in the British military, providing hundreds of them training in strategy and advanced weaponry that they would later use to form the Israeli Defense Force. The British military also allowed Palestine’s Jewish minority to form a secret intelligence unit to scope out every Palestinian village to ascertain its ease of access and desirability for occupation.

During the 1940s, Britain suddenly reversed themselves and banned any further Jewish immigration to Palestine. This decision would lead to the rise of three Jewish terrorist groups Haganah, Irgun and the Stern Gang. All three carried out a slate of deadly bombing campaigns directed against British troops and Palestinian civilians

In 1946, the newly formed Arab League, a regional coalition of Arab states, held their first summit in Egypt to discuss the growing crisis in Israel.

In 1947, the crisis came to a head when Jewish militants led by future Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin* kidnapped and murdered three British soldiers, to punish Britain for executing three Jewish terrorists for their bombing campaigns.

This so-called Soldiers Affair – as well as British public opposition to the loss of British troops in Palestine – would lead the UK to announce (in February 1947) their plan to withdraw from Palestine and turn governance of the country over to the newly formed United Nations.

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*In 1978 Begin would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, for their role in negotiating the Oslo Peace Accord.