AN ISRAELI TERRORIST GANG ASSASSINATED A UNITED NATIONS NEGOTIATOR
Count Folke Bernadotte(1895-1948), was born in Stockholm, Sweden, January 2, 1895, a descendent of the Napoleonic marshal Jean Bernadotte, who in 1810 was elected crown prince of Sweden, and in 1818 succeeded to the throne as Charles XIV, Count Bernadotte was also a grandson of King Oscar II of Sweden and a nephew of King Gustav V.

At the start of WW II, heading the Sveriges Scoutforbund (the Swedish Boy Scouts), Bernadotte brought them into Sweden's defense system for anti-aircraft work and as medical assistants. He was also vice chairman of the Swedish Red Cross, exchanging disabled British and German war prisoners, with frequent trips to London and Berlin for conferences with high officials of both countries. In Spring 1945, he was summoned at the Swedish legation's temporary headquarters at Friedrichsruh, Germany, by Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo and commander-in-chief of the German home front. Meeing at Lübeck, Germany, on April 24, saying that Hitler was dying and that he was in authority, Himmler offered the complete surrender of Germany to Britain and the United States, provided Germany was allowed to continue resistance against Russia. The Swedish foreign office transmitted Himmler's offer to Prime Minister Churchill and President Truman. They notified Premier Stalin, advising him of the British-American decision to accept only an unconditional surrender to the three Allied governments. A translation of the count's book describing his negotiations was published in the United States under the title The Curtain Falls (1945).

On May 20, 1948, the five main powers of the United Nations Security Council chose Count Bernadotte to mediate peace in the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine. Initiating talks with Arab and Jewish leaders in Palestine and Arab leaders in Cairo, Egypt, and Amman, Jordan, Bernadotte obtained agreement for a four-week truce commencing June 11. On June 28 he submitted to the Arab League and the Israeli government a peace plan rejected in partby both sides. On July 12 he reported to the United Nations Security Council, in New York, and returned to Palestine.

On September 17, Count Bernadotte and Colonel Andr&eacue;e P. Serot of the French air force were assassinated in Jerusalem by members of the Stern group, extreme Zionists who had committed many atrocities many years against the British and Arabs.

Three days after his death, Count Bernadotte's final report on his peace negotiations was published in Paris. It presented the United Nations General Assembly his suggested terms for a peace that was to be imposed by the United Nations, and won the immediate support of the United States and Britain.

Ralph J. Bunche, Afro-American United Nations aide to Bernadotte and personal representative in Jerusalem of United Nations Secretary General Trygve Lie, was appointed Bernadotte's temporary successor. For this, Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950.

Bernadotte's book Instead of Arms was published in Sweden and the United States soon after his death.
Consideration only of events and negotiations from World World I provide motivations for acts of the Jewish and Arabic peoples. The Ottoman Empire fought with Germany and Austro-Hungary against Great Britain, France, and (after 1917) The United States. Through Lawrence of Arabia, the British won support of Middle Eastern Arabic groupings by promising to create after the War a vast Arabic state. But there was a secret agreement, the Sykes-Picot document, between Britain, France, and Russia in 1916. Britain was to control what is now known as Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine; France, to control Syria and Lebanon; Russia to control Ottomon regions in Central Asia. However, to enlist the scientific services of biochemist (and Zionist leader) Chaim Weizman in manufacture of explosives, Britain issued in 1917 The Balfour Declaration, promising to support "the establishment in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people".

In 1920, The League of Nations (predecessor of The United Nations) declared a British Mandate over Palestine, which included what is now Israel, Gaza, The West Bank, part of The Golan Heights, and the Kingdom of Jordan. (The population was mainly Arabic, with Jewish, Bedouin, and Druze minorities.) Frustrations and feelings of betrayal by both Arabic and Jewish factions developed during the British Mandate period, 1920-1947.

The Stern gang (Hebrew Lehi, Lohamei Herut Israel, "Fighters for the Freedom of Israel") was a Jewish nationalist group, widely labeled as terrorists in the British Mandate of Palestine prior the founding of the State of Israel, and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_gang) Among atrocities attributed to them, and apparently claimed by them, was the assassination of Lord Moyne, a British government representative, in Cairo in November, 1944.

The Stern Gang was founded by Avraham Stern, splitting off from Irgun, shorthand for Irgun Tsvai-Leumi (also spelled Irgun Zvai-Leumi, Hebrew for "Military-National Organization"). (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun) It branched off from Haganah because of discontent with Haganah's restraint under Arab and British pressure. Irgun was secretly supported from 1936 by the Polish government, who hoped that establishing a Jewish state would help emigration of Jews from Poland. Irgun received guns and military training from the Poles. Menachem Begin became its leader. Later, the Irgun was merged into the Israeli Defence Force. Irgun carried out numerous terrorist attacks:

After death of founder Avraham Stern at British hands in 1942, the Stern Gang was led by a triumvirate, including Yitzhak Shamir, who became Prime Minister of Israel in 1983, succeeding Menachem Begin. Another member of the Stern Gang was this very man, Menachem Begin, who, as Prime Minister of Israel, negotiated with President Carter and Egyptian Prime Minister Anwar Sadat in 1977. For this, Begin and Sadat jointly received the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_against_Israel In 20th century preWWII years, Palestinians attacks on Jews was comparable to their repression in Russia, not what "scripted terrorism" has come to mean. The first terorist acts under the British Mandate in Palestine (1920-47) was the work of the Jewish terrorist gang, Irgun: These, of course, provoked Arabic retaliation. Subsequent Arabic acts occurred mostly during open warfare between the two sides. The terrorist acts seemingly most remembered, and referred to by the media and the talking heads on TV, are those of the PLO (formed in 1964, 18 years after Irgun's first terrorist act) against Israelis beginning in 1970, 24 years after the terrorism initiated by Irgun: bombings, massacres in synagogues and public airports, with airplane hijackings across Europe -= the most famous event being the Munich Olympic Massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972.
My point is not to lay blame, but to "tell it like it is", as best I know it. I am familiar with many of these events because I read about them in The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Washington Post. But I find no recent media updates (revisionism?), so would have nothing to support me without such ONLINE resources as Wikepedia, which calls itself "the free encyclopedia".

I suggest also the statement made in The New York Times, Feb. 3, 2002, by Ramalla (www.ramallahonline.com).