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That Call from Marty Peretz that Transforms a Young Journo’s Horizon

As I wrote last night, Folke Bernadotte was killed by Jewish terrorists loyal to Shamir's Stern Gang in Jerusalem 60 years ago.

"When [Yitzhak] Shamir became foreign
minister of Israel, he greeted UN official Brian Urquhart by saying
that he had 'never dealt with anyone from the United Nations before.'

'Oh but you have, Foreign Minister,' replied Urquhart.  'You dealt with Count Bernadotte, did you not?'"–Andrew and Leslie Cockburn's Dangerous Liaison, p. 35. 

Thanks to the nimble primate Nim Chimpsky for that. I would add this.
All young ambitious Harvard-grad journalists with opposable thumbs pass if they are lucky
thru the gilded portals of Marty Peretz's New Republic. I did some work
for the New Republic. One piece was about Urquhart. The signal I got
from the magazine was I should attack him; and because I was ambitious,
I did. Met him at the secretariat. Didn't know much about the U.N. Made
fun of Urquhart. Peretz was delighted. Called me on the phone. I
remember talking to him on the white wall phone of my grandmother's
kitchen on Grand Street on the Lower East Side. He wanted me to do
more, more about the U.N. Trying to mock and nullify the U.N. because of its resolutions about Israel. I lived with my grandmother, till she died in
the back room, a few blocks from where she was born on Cherry Street,
and from where my great-grandfather Philip worked as a tailor on
Delancey Street. Some of us Jews did not become entangled in the
violent delusions of late Zionism.

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