Did Israel, not Lehi, murder UN Mediator, Folke Bernadotte, in 1948?
Folke Bernadotte at Karlstad airpor in 1946
Thomas Suarez writes in Middle East Monitor:
In the mid-1940s, Swedish diplomat, Folke Bernadotte, orchestrated the release of about 31,000 prisoners from German concentration camps. Thus, when, in mid-1948, the UN needed a Mediator to sort out the chaos in Palestine, Bernadotte was ideal for the task: not only was he widely respected as a peace-maker, his role in saving Jews from the death camps should have earned him the respect of the Zionists.
However, on 17 September, four months after Israel’s self-declared statehood and just as he was about to release his new peace plan, Bernadotte was murdered by Zionist assassins.
But by who, exactly? Lehi, the so-called “Stern Gang”, has been the presumed assassin (and there is no question that Lehi wanted him dead). Recently declassified documents, however, suggest that although Lehi terrorists pulled the trigger, it was the Israeli State itself that hired them.
That fateful day, Bernadotte and his associates flew from Rhodes to Qalandiya Airport (now the West Bank). The Arab Legion met them with an armed escort to see their three-car entourage safely, as far as it could – to the part of Jerusalem under Israeli control. Israel, though fully informed of threats against his life, sent no escort.
The entourage was stopped at an Israeli checkpoint, where they were “manoeuvred in such a way that was later interpreted by them [possibly] as a signal [to the assassins that Bernadotte] was seated in the third car”. From there, they passed Israel’s Military Governor, Dr. Bernhard Joseph, in an armoured car and a vehicle with three Israeli soldiers.
Future Mossad director Reuven Shiloah, said by Niewenhuys’ source to have organised Bernadotte’s assassination for Israel, in a 1948 photo from the Israeli Government Press Office
It was then that a jeep with armed men blocked the road. One went straight to the third car, apparently knowing that Bernadotte was in the rear seat, killing him and the colleague next to him. Later, leaflets appeared from an unknown “Fatherland Front” claiming responsibility for the murders.
It is worth, at this point, noting the political chemistry of the moment: Israel’s May declaration of statehood would mean little unless it could secure recognition from most of the world’s nations and be admitted into the United Nations. Its failure to prevent this most notorious of Zionist assassinations was an international scandal; but a serious response would show the world that it behaved as a responsible nation, free of its terroristic genesis.
How, then, to explain what happened, instead?
Israel never cordoned off the crime scene or made any systematic analysis. The car in which Bernadotte was murdered was not examined until after it had been repaired, and the first car was never examined at all. No attempt was made to identify the jeep, nor the source of the “Fatherland Front” leaflets.