1948 Israel Assassinates Swedish UN Diplomat

Greve Folke Bernadotte Assasinated For Reporting Truth Of Israeli – Arab War And Wanting A Peace Deal#

Greve Folke Bernadotte (af Wisborg) was a Swedish soldier and diplomat who negotiated the release of over 20,000 jews from camps in WW2. He headed the Swedish Red Cross and was sent to Jerusalem as a diplomat to negotiate peace between Israelis and Arabs.

On May 20, 1948, the UN Security Council appointed Count Folke Bernadotte as mediator for Palestine, a region engulfed in conflict at the dawn of Israeli statehood. Bernadotte’s immediate task was to secure peace amidst rising tensions. His efforts bore fruit when, on June 11, he managed to broker a cease-fire, reluctantly accepted by both Arab states and the nascent state of Israel.

“Bernadotte negotiated the release of 20,000 Jews in World War 2 and was repaid by Zionist Jews by taking his life.”

Bernadotte, however, soon found himself at odds with many by advocating for the rights of Arab refugees. His proposal was straightforward yet controversial: Arab refugees should be allowed to return to their homes within what was now Israel. This stance made him a target among various factions, particularly those who saw his actions as a threat to the newly formed state’s security and demographic makeup.

Despite the threats, Bernadotte persisted. His dedication to peace was cut tragically short on September 17, 1948, when he and André-Pierre Serot, his French colleague and UN observer, were assassinated by members of the Jewish extremist group, the Stern Gang. This act of violence not only ended the lives of two peace seekers but also highlighted the volatile nature of the conflict.

Israel protected the murderers of Bernadotte by hiding the murder weapon in a police station and closing the case.

The aftermath was telling; the protection extended by Tel Aviv to the perpetrators underscored the complex political landscape Bernadotte was navigating. His mission, while fraught with danger, underscored the dire need for dialogue and compromise in regions torn by conflict. His legacy, though marked by his untimely death, remains a poignant reminder of the costs of peace mediation in deeply divided lands.

The Attack On Bernadotte#

A four-man team, consisting of Yehoshua Cohen, Yitzhak Ben-Moshe (Markovitz), Avraham Steinberg, and Meshulam Makover, ambushed Bernadotte’s motorcade in Jerusalem’s Katamon neighborhood. The team left a Lehi base in a Jeep and set up a makeshift roadblock at Ben Zion Guini Square, off Hapalmach Street, and waited in the jeep. When Bernadotte’s motorcade approached, Cohen, Ben-Moshe, and Steinberg got out and approached it, while Makover, the driver, remained in the jeep. Captain Moshe Hillman, the motorcade’s Israeli liaison officer, who was sitting in the leading UN vehicle, called out in Hebrew to let them through, but was ignored.

Cohen came up to Bernadotte’s sedan and fired through an open window, pumping 6 shots into Bernadotte’s chest, throat and arms and 18 into Colonel André Serot who was seated to his left, killing both. Serot had swapped places in the motorcade to join Bernadotte and thank him personally for having saved his wife’s life in a German concentration camp. Ben-Moshe and Steinberg shot at the tires of the UN vehicles, while Cohen finished the magazine by firing at the radiator. The driver of the sedan, Colonel Begley, got out and tried to grapple with Cohen as he fired his last shots, but was burned in the face by the gun flashes. Ben-Moshe and Steinberg then rushed back and mounted the jeep, which quickly accelerated down a side road, while Cohen ran away from the scene across a roadside field.

Investigation and Cover-up#

Israeli police investigated the killings claiming to be unable to identify who killed the men. They closed the case without indentifying any of the murderers.

Yellin-Mor and another Lehi member, Mattityahu Shmulevitz, were charged with belonging to a terrorist organization. They were found guilty but immediately released and pardoned. Yellin-Mor had meanwhile been elected to the first Knesset.

Years later, Cohen’s role was uncovered by David Ben-Gurion‘s biographer Michael Bar Zohar, while Cohen was working as Ben-Gurion’s personal bodyguard. The first public admission of Lehi’s role in the killing was made on the anniversary of the assassination in 1977. After the statue of limitations had expired in 1971. In 1988, two years after Cohen’s death, Zettler and Makover publicly confessed their role in the assassination and confirmed that Cohen had killed Bernadotte.

The weapon which was used in the assassination (an MP 40, serial number 2581)^[38] was lost, and was only found again in 2018 during an inventory check in the Heritage House of the Israel Police. The police had hidden the murder weapon to aide the killers in escaping.

 Diplomatic Fallout#

The Swedish government believed that Bernadotte had been assassinated by Israeli government agents. They publicly attacked the inadequacy of the Israeli investigation, and campaigned unsuccessfully to delay Israel’s admission to the United Nations. In 1950, Sweden recognized Israel, but relations remained frosty despite Israeli attempts to mollify Sweden, such as through the planting of a Bernadotte Forest by the Jewish National Fund in Israel.