Today on my Facebook wall, I posted the following headline:
SWEDISH FOREIGN MINISTER WALLSTRÖM MAY BE ASSASSINATED, SUGGESTS ISRAELI FORMER CHAIRMAN OF THE PEDAGOGIC SECRETARIAT OF THE EDUCATION MINISTRY.
The article by Zvi Zameret was posted as an op-ed in the rightist Sheldon Adelson-sponsored paper Makor Rishon (‘First Source’), under the title, “Margot Wallström’s source of inspiration,” referring to the Swedish Foreign Minister. As it is in Hebrew, I shall try to make some mention of its salient contents, without translating the whole due to time constraints.
The matter was now brought to my attention via a tweet by journalist Barak Ravid (Haaretz) and via post of journalist David Sheen and forwarded by PS Arihant.
The author first boasts about a friendship with a former member of the Stern Gang (one of the most notorious Jewish terror groups, headed by later PM Izhak Shamir) member, Yehoshea Cohen, who lived in kibbutz Sdeh Boker (Ben Gurion’s kibbutz), and mentions that Cohen was one of Ben Gurion’s closest friends, as well as him being “one of the most ferocious fighters of the Stern Gang”. As is also stated in the article, Yehoshea was the actual murderer of Folke Bernadotte.
The article circles around the 1948 murder of Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, UN special envoy, who was sent to mediate a resolution of the Palestinian issue in 1948, making recommendations for the withdrawal of Israeli forces and return of refugees – making him a target for elimination, executed by the Gang in Jerusalem in September 1948.
Zameret, the former director of pedagogy for the Israeli education ministry, seeks to set the focus on Bernadotte’s person, and a suggestion that he was an anti-Semite. He recalls an occurrence in 1984, when the author traveled to Copenhagen, and was “ordered” by his friend Cohen to meet with Dr. Johannes Holm, whom the author refers to as “the Danish Refugee Minister” during WW2. That is very strange, because from my search of him, I reached an article about Holm in precisely the relevant time, by the highly authoritative Danish newspaper Politiken, in which Holm is mentioned as the head of the Danish National Institute for Health Data and Disease Control.
In any case, Zameret tells that Cohen had read in a paper that Holm had written a book about the White Busses, where he claims that Count Bernadotte was an anti-Semite. The author tells how he met with Holm, and how the latter told him of a “regrettable incident” with Bernadotte from 1944: That the Count, who was vice chairman of the Swedish Red Cross, in his negotiation of the freeing of Scandinavian prisoners of Nazi Germany, “refused to include Jews within the exchange deal”.
Now I have not read the book, published in 1984, myself – but I have read a review which is written in very critical tone of Bernadotte, in the Flensborg Avis 18.6.2012, which refers to such an incident. And here it says that the issue concerned 400 Scandinavian Jews in Theresienstadt camp, and it was THE NAZIS who refused to allow the Jews to be transported together with other Scandinavians. Apparently, Bernadotte conceded unwillingly to this decree – and this was to be his cardinal sin according to the author and Cohen, marking him an anti-Semite.
Now Zameret tells of how upon return he met Cohen in Israel, when Cohen was visiting his sick wife, who was also a former Stern Gang member, in hospital at the eve of her death. He tells how Cohen did not say a word, only smiled, and how his wife Nehama responded: “Yehoshea, now it is clear that Bernadotte was an anti-Semite, the bullets that you shot him with were not [expended] in vain”.
The author continues with a long list of Bernadotte’s “chutzpah”, in his suggestions to resolve the situation by a withdrawal of Israeli forces, return of refugees and reinstatement of Jerusalem as a corpus separatum as intended by the UN Partition Plan of 1947. In Zameret’s account, Bernadotte’s chutzpah was his “annulation” of the partition plan, calling for a “confederate rule between Israel and Transjordan” involving an “economic, national and security treaty” (referring to Bernadotte’s June 1948 suggestion which he revised in September). Tarnishing Bernadotte for his ‘ignorance’, in having “no idea about the Arab dream and the Jewish mentality” the author claimed “both sides disliked him”. He chides him for working on the behest of the British and the American State Department, who “did not believe in the possibility of the existence of the State of Israel” and ends his McCarthyite tour de force by referring to the American Secretary of State as being influenced by Yehuda Leib Magnes, prominent Reform rabbi and President of Hebrew University who had met with American officials — Magnes himself was pleased with Bernadotte’s positions.
Finally the author arrives at the summation of all the above, with a eugenics-vein, aimed at the Swedish Foreign Minister, who has suggested that Israel’s killings of many Palestinian attackers were “extra-judicial executions” and has called for an investigation of these cases.
“What do the things I have mentioned indicate about Bernadotte? [They indicate] covert anti-Semitism, ignorance and arrogance, cooperation with senior elements in the country and interests that play a decisive role. Has anything changed in the Swedish DNA [my emphasis] in the decades following Bernadotte’s death? Nothing has changed. The Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström, with her characteristic covert anti-Semitism, with her arrogance, ignorance, and her interest-bound speculation regarding her future Muslim voters – she too seeks to fight the foundations of the State of Israel. I am convinced and certain that her intentions will smoulder, just as all of the undignified count’s intentions did. [My emphasis]”
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Well, that was ‘educational’. I hope you learned a lot about how to kill a messenger.
This post first appeared in somewhat different form on Ofir’s Facebook page today. Richard Silverstein has also picked up the story at his site.
This call has been circulated to stand up for Wallström. The link for the mail-addresses of Swedish Embassies is http://www.swedenabroad.com
International call to action in support of Sweden’s FM Margot Wallström
Swedish Foreign Minister Wallström is being shamelessly attacked by Israel for her principled stance on Palestinian rights. It’s urgent to let Wallström know that citizens around the world are on her side when it comes to justice for the Palestinians. Please act by sending an e-mail to the Swedish embassy in your country.
As we witnessed over the past days Swedish Foreign Minister Wallström is being ruthlessly attacked by Israeli leaders and their supporters. Why? Because she touched on the rights of the Palestinians. For Israel, that’s a no-go. For Israel there is no such thing as ‘Palestinian rights’. No surprise, as many Israeli leaders even deny the existence of Palestine and the Palestinian people.
The Swedes are now enduring the same inflammatory slander and sanctions as NGO’s, Palestinian Members of Knesset or other critical voices from within Israel – to name just a few recent examples. All of them have been smeared as anti-Semites that support terrorism. And it works. Israel gets away with this aggressive ‘Killing the messenger’ tactics time and again, as it gets away with its extrajudicial killings of Palestinians – the Israeli crime Wallström demands to be investigated.
Wallström is being blackened to derail her demand. That should be prevented. How? By making a huge point of it. By writing and blogging. By sending out a strong message in support of the Swedish government. By demanding that our national politicians express solidarity with Wallström’s legitimate and much-needed stance. By urging the media to address the sickening pattern of Israeli slander.
A good start is to send a supportive message to the Swedish embassy in your country, using the underneath text or writing your own. Consider copying your message to your national politicians, political parties or media – as a firm notice that Wallström has massive support when it comes to justice for the Palestinians.
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To the attention of Mrs. Margot Wallström,
Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Sweden
Dear Mrs. Wallström,
I have taken notice of your stance on the necessity to investigate Israel’s extrajudicial killings of Palestinians. I have also noted the shameful reactions of Israeli leaders and others. It’s the ferocity and disgrace of these reactions that urge me to speak out in support of your remarks and integrity.
I support your position that Israel should be held accountable for what are in fact proven extrajudicial killings. Amnesty International and other organisations have provided plenty of evidence, as in the case of Hadeel al-Hashlamoun, the young Palestinian woman who was executed point blank by the Israeli army. Much of this evidence is available online, ranging from reports to video’s and testimonies. They make clear that these killings are no exception, but part and parcel of the structural Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians.
Its not that we don’t know about the Israeli atrocities. The problem is that we refuse to act on them. As a result the Palestinians pay the price and Israel goes unpunished – giving the country carte blanche to proceed, which is exactly what we are witnessing. This is why I applaud your principled stance. If no one acts, the remains of the Palestinian society will be destroyed before our eyes.
I regret that the Foreign Minister of my own country has not acted, and has not expressed his support for Sweden. Please be informed that I will urge him to correct these failures.
Sincerely,
[name, place, country]
From everything I have read the count was one of the “good guys.”
One of his assassins, Shamir, went on to become Prime Minister. That is how Israel rewards its terrorists.
Ms. Wallström is a lonely warning voice in the great silence surroundig the atrocities of Israel, and women are always more courageous than men are. I wish we had a lot more such politicians in Europe, or in Washington.
The zionists should not forget that count Bernadotte saved thousands of jewish lives in Budapest during WWII. It seems it is all forgotten by those, who today may still live in Israel, thanks to his courage. He lived a very dangerous life, with one foot always in a prison, as the nazis never worried about arresting or killing an undesireable diplomat.
Bernadotte secured the release of some 30,000 Jews from German death camps, and this was one of the reasons he was selected for the task of mending the disaster of Res 181’s aftermath: the UN naively thought that because of his history, he would command respect from the Zionists. With Ben-Gurion at the helm, Bernadotte’s murder scene was left unsecured, and the suspects were pardoned even as they refused to renounce terror (some had joined the government). It was left to Sweden to investigate the assassination.
Magnes was one of a group of Jewish intellectuals in Palestine at that time known as Ihud (Unity) who advocated a binational state in the whole of Palestine as an alternative to partition. The philosopher Martin Buber was another prominent member of the group. After the Nakba scholars in a number of Arab countries picked up their ideas. In particular, the exiled Palestinian political scientist Kamal Khaldi, who joined the faculty of the University of Damascus, wrote a book on a binational state in Palestine that was published in Arabic in Beirut. An English translation exists but has not yet been published. On the Israeli side, the former vice mayor of Jerusalem Menon Benvenisti has been advocating binationalism in recent years (he writes about it in his book “Son of the Cypresses”). I met both Khaldi and Benvenisti when they attended a conference at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies in 2000.