Honoring the 60th anniversary of the Nakba-era murder of Count Bernadotte with some quotations supplied to me by Nim Chimpsky, a primate who has brilliantly mimicked human speech, from the book Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations With a Militant Israel, by Stephen Green. Did I check the quotes? No; that is how much I trust Chimpsky, who assures me that he shaves. To the data:
“There is no doubt that the Stern
group was involved, nor that the government did in fact round up many
Sternists after the murder. But there is strong evidence that the
Israeli government was itself directly involved in the killing, and
that the U.S. government secretly investigated this involvement.”
(Green, p. 38)
“On the night of September 17, the date of Bernadotte’s death, the Czech Consulates in both Jerusalem
and Haifa worked until midnight. Some 30 visas were processed for the
Stern gang members who had been involved in the planning and execution
of the assassination. The passports on which the visas were stamped
had been delivered late in the day with the “recommendation” of the
Israeli government that the visas be approved. All of the passports
had valid Israeli exit permits, granted in the hours just after the
killing.”
“Between September 18 and September 29, most if not all of the 30 left Israel on flights for Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Three of the 30 left directly from Jerusalem, on September 18, the day
after the shooting. Those who left had in fact been rounded up and
interned in Jerusalem, in the hours after the killing, during the
Israeli government “purge” of the Stern gang. But beginning on
September 18, those involved in the murder were permitted to slip out
of jail, and were flown secretly to Prague.”
… “By mid-October, the U.S government believed that the Israeli
government, or some part of it, had directly participated in
Bernadotte’s assassination. Robert Lovett, Acting Secretary of State,
assigned a special unit in the department (within the Intelligence and
Researce Section) to investigate the matter, calling this unit the
Acquisition and Distribution Division.” (p. 39)
“It
was primarily the scale, precision, and speed of the evacuation-escape
that made the department suspicious that the Stern gang was not
involved alone, and the details of the escape were a major focus of the
department’s investigation.” (p. 40)
