“Rewarding Terrorism” in 1948 — How Zionists Used Terror to Get a State
Zionists say that recognising the State of Palestine is “rewarding terrorism”. They should know — the State of Israel was a “reward” for a brutal and bloody campaign of Jewish Terrorism.
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The original meaning of the word “terrorism” in English derived from the French Revolution and was used only to describe “violence perpetrated by a government”. The term was limited to that original meaning until “well into the 20th century”, according to Merriam Webster.
It is said that the words “terrorism” and “terrorists” as applying to rebellious non-governmental actors first entered the British lexicon during the time of the British Mandate in Palestine, when British Army personnel, international diplomats as well as Arab civilians became the targets of Zionist “paramilitary” groups bent on forcing the British Empire to give them a “Jewish State”.
The war between Britain and the Zionists
When Zionists speak of the Israeli “War of Independence”, one might be forgiven for thinking that this “war” was fought against the Arab population of Palestine, but that is not completely correct. While the Zionists did fight against the native Arab population in 1948 to expel them after having declared an Israeli state, in reality, the first part of the “war” was fought against the British Empire.
The Zionist-British “war” now goes by different names, such as the Palestine Emergency, the Jewish Uprising, and the Jewish Insurgency. The conflict, which took place on and off from 1939 to 1948, saw various underground Jewish Zionist militia groups use violent terror attacks to intimidate and influence the British .
The goal of this “War of Independence” was to force the British to leave Palestine and, essentially, “get out of the way” so the Zionists could prosecute the next phase of the war: seizing the land and conducting the brutal ethnic cleansing and forced expulsion of the native Arab population in Palestine (aka, the Nakba).
The Balfour Declaration and the Peel Commission
Zionists like to trace the origin of the legitimacy of Israel back to something called the Balfour Declaration. This was a British policy document written in 1917 by then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a devoted British Jewish Zionist. The letter announced the British government’s support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, which was then a region of the Ottoman Empire with a small minority Jewish population.
It was the first time any state authority had mentioned such a thing as a “Jewish national home”.
Zionists also like to point to the Peel Commission of 1937, which was a Royal commission that first proposed a “partition plan” for Palestine. The plan called for a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a large section that was to remain under British control.
For the Zionists, this was much less than ideal, but at least they would not have to live side-by-side with Arabs.
The White Paper: why the Zionists went to war against Britain
What is less talked about is the so-called “White Paper of 1939”. This was a formal document approved by the House of Commons, and acted as the governing policy for Mandatory Palestine from 1939 to the 1948 British departure.
The White Paper called for the establishment of a Jewish “national home” in an independent Palestinian state within 10 years. It specifically rejected the Peel Commission’s idea of partitioning Palestine.
To make matters worse for the Zionists, the paper also limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 for five years and ruled that further immigration would then be determined by the Arab majority. Jews were restricted from buying Arab land in all but 5% of the Mandate area.
A “massive terrorist campaign”
So — not only were the Zionists being asked to wait 10 years, they were being told that they could not have their Jewish State, they could not own land in 95% of Palestine, and the immigration of their Jewish brethren would be sharply curtailed in order to ensure a continuing (and overwhelming) Arab majority in Palestine.
In short, the White Paper amounted to Britain’s declaration of war against the Zionists and Zionism.
As one group of historians put it: the invocation of the White Paper and the resulting British policy of a single state in Palestine “stimulated the Jewish forces to a massive terrorist campaign against the British resulting in an unprecedented Zionist victory.”
The Jewish terrorists who took on the British Empire
The Haganah
The first Jewish militant group that formed in Palestine was The Jewish Self-Defense Organization (Haganah), which was established by the right-wing Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky on June 15, 1920. The Haganah was the more moderate of all the Zionist military groups, and the organisation eventually became the modern Israeli Defense Force (IDF) when Israel was formed.
In fact, the Haganah actually received training from the British Army during the 1930s, training which was ultimately used against the Brits during the 1940s.
Once the White Paper triggered the Zionist war against the British, the Haganah concentrated on circumventing the immigration controls.
The Irgun
As the Zionists’ fight against the British became increasingly “hot”, the most violent factions of the Haganah broke off to create Irgun in 1931. This was due to the Irgun members’ dissatisfaction with Haganah leadership’s reluctance to kill British soldiers, diplomats and other personages. The leader of the Irgun was none other than Menachem Begin, the future Prime Minister of Israel and the founder of what is today’s Likud Party.
During the first years of WWII, however, the Irgun limited their attacks on the British, considering it more important to support their enemies against the common threat, Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Instead, the Irgun focused on attacking Arabs during the early war years.
In 1944, however, Irgun finally “took the gloves off” and started attacking British targets with a vengeance (see below).
The LEHI
Not all of the Irgun members agreed with the “cease fire” against the British Occupation during the war years. Avraham Stern, for example, always felt that the British were the REAL enemy — even more so than the Arabs. So When Irgun decided to stand down during the war, Stern created LEHI as an even MORE violent force to kill Brits.
The term LEHI is a Hebrew acronym that means “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel”. The Brits, however, referred to this particularly bloodthirsty faction as the “Stern Gang”.
Unlike the other Zionists, Stern did not see Nazi Germany as the primary threat. In January 1941, Stern even attempted to establish an agreement with the German Nazi authorities, offering to “actively take part in the war on Germany’s side” in return for German support for Jewish immigration to Palestine and establishing a Jewish state (he received no response).
Stern’s dedication to killing Brits ensured that all of Mandatory Palestine was covered with “wanted” posters offering a reward for his capture. In 1942, Stern was captured and subsequently died while in custody of the British police. He was succeeded by Yitzhak Shamir, another future Prime Minister of Israel.
Are you starting to see a pattern here?
The “Jewish Resistance Movement”
Irgun and LEHI carried out all manners of terrorist attacks during the years of WWII, but after the war ended, the Jewish Agency, the official umbrella organisation of the Zionist movement in Palestine, decided it was time to create a united front to take on the British Empire and kick them out of Palestine.
To this end, the Agency created the “Jewish Resistance Movement”, a combined force of all three Zionist underground terror groups: Haganah, Irgun and LEHI. The new terror alliance was founded in October 1945 and coordinated acts of sabotage to undermine the British authority in Mandatory Palestine.
The Islamic Resistance Movement of today
It should be noted that Hamas, Israel’s sworn enemy, is actually a similar organisation. “HAMAS” is an Arabic acronym that means “Islamic Resistance Movement”.
According to the Hamas charter of 2017:
1. The Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas” is a Palestinian Islamic national liberation and resistance movement. Its goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project. Its frame of reference is Islam, which determines its principles, objectives and means.
Just as the Zionists wanted to confront the British Empire, so do Hamas want to confront Israel. The irony is intoxicating.
Zionist Terrorists — WHAT THEY DID
The full list of terror attacks carried out by the Jewish paramilitaries in their war against the British are far too numerous to list in one article.
However, there is Wikipedia page dedicated to listing the terror attacks of the Irgun here.
There is also a page that lists all the terror attacks of the LEHI/Stern Gang here.
What follows below is a curated list I put together of the most egregious acts carried out in the name of Zionism.
The sinking of the Patria
Although the Haganah prided itself on being less extreme than either the Irgun or the LEHI, it nonetheless carried out multiple “assassinations, reprisals and terror attacks”. But the largest operation was the sinking of the Patria.
As mentioned above, the Haganah was mostly focused on facilitating and protecting illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine. In November 1940, the British planned to deport a group of 1800 illegal Jewish immigrants to Mauritius, departing from the port of Haifa, aboard the SS Patria, a French-built ocean liner under British flag.
The Haganah decided to blow up the ship in order to stop the deportation, killing 267 people: 200 Jewish refugees and 67 British crew and soldiers. The operation was deemed a “success” as the British authorities then allowed the remaining 1600 Jewish refugees to stay in Palestine.
The sinking was the most deadly Jewish terrorist attack of the war.
The bombing of the King David Hotel
Perhaps the most infamous terror attack was the Irgun’s bombing of the King David Hotel on July 22, 1946. The hotel served as the headquarters of the British Administration for Mandatory Palestine, including the Secretariat of the Government of Palestine and the Headquarters of the British Armed Forces in Palestine and Transjordan.
The Irgun’s bomb killed 91 and wounded 46. As might be expected given the presence of such British imperial offices, the victims were mostly British soldiers and diplomats, but there were also foreign dignitaries and at least one American among the dead.
Irgun decided to blow up the hotel in order to destroy some incriminating evidence that the British had seized from the Jewish Agency a month earlier during a major raid called Operation Agatha. The seized material linked the Jewish Agency to terror attacks, and so the Irgun wanted to destroy the evidence.
The bombing marked a milestone in terms of reporting in the international press, and from what I can see, it was the first time that British and American press started referring to “Jewish Terrorists” by that name.
Terror aimed at British troops
The “Jewish Terrorists” were particularly focused on destroying British morale. British soldiers were frequently targets for attack and kidnappings, often in retaliation for death sentences passed on members of Irgun and LEHI.
As one soldier described a Zionist attack:
‘Two people were killed there, Private Catford and a mate of ours was Private Kenny…I’m sure it was the Jews. Because they used to have women on the side of the roads and they used to coax the men to stop and once they’d stop they’d come out of the rocks or trees, or bushes, or orange groves.”
A classic terrorist ambush technique.
Kidnapping for prisoner exchange
Hamas did not invent the practice of kidnapping and taking hostages in order to bargain for the release of their comrades.
During the British-Zionist War, the Irgun conducted numerous kidnappings in order to obtain hostages that could be exchanged for Irgun and LEHI prisoners held by the British.
This practice became even more prevalent once the British Administration started to impose the death penalty for some of the terrorists more deadly acts.
On January the 27th 1945 the first kidnapping of the British-Zionist War took place. The British Judge Windham was kidnapped from his own courtroom in Tel Aviv. Windham was released when the British government gave in to his kidnappers demands, which was the release of Jewish detainees.
On the 18th of June 1946 the Irgun kidnappers struck again. This time they held up the British Officers Club in Tel Aviv and took five British officers and one RAF service man and dragged them to get away cars out side.
According to a report, the object of this raid was to obtain hostages to hold against the two Jews who had been captured in a arms raid at Sarafand in March. Four days later two of the kidnapped officers were released. The remaining three officers were held captive for another 12 days. They were released after the two condemned Jews had their sentences commuted.
The Night of the Beatings
The Irgun became ever more aggressive in going “tit-for-tat” with the British Administration. The so-called “Night of the Beatings” was a retaliatory act in which Irgun administered “lashings” to kidnapped British soldiers in response to captured Irgun members being flogged by the British.
It all started on September 13, 1946, when the Irgun robbed a bank in Jaffa. Three of the perpetrators were caught and tried a few days later. Two received long prison sentences, and one was sentenced to “eighteen lashes”.
Menachem Begin was outraged at this “humiliation”. How dare these British Goyim whip a Zionist patriot like some common animal? The Irgun published a warning, in Hebrew and English, to the British authorities not to carry out the flogging, threatening to do the same to British officers.
The British, ever more determined to show strength, carried out the punishment.
True to their word, Irgun members kidnapped four British soldiers and a Major of the 6th Airborne Division and flogged them in the streets, administering 18 lashes to each.
The”Sergeants Affair”
On 4 May 1947, the Irgun raided the Central Prison in Acre and freed 27 incarcerated Irgun and LEHI rebels from British custody. During the operation, however, five of the Irgun fighters were captured.
The Jewish Agency called the break "an irresponsible suicidal act", while Irgun commander Menachem Begin hailed it as an act of heroism.
The five men who had been captured were tried in a British military court. Three of them were sentenced to death.
In July, in response, the Irgun kidnapped two British sergeants and threatened to execute them if the British carried out the hangings.
The British, who were increasingly desperate to maintain control, executed the three Irgun men two weeks later.
Menachem Begin, the leader of the Irgun — and future prime Minister of Israel —was outraged once more. In one of the most despicable and provocative acts of the war, Begin ordered that the sergeants be hanged in response.
The Zionists killed the two sergeants and hung their booby-trapped bodies in a eucalyptus grove near Netanya. When the bodies were found, the booby trap injured a British officer as they were cut down.
The incident caused horror and shock in Britain, and anti-Jewish riots broke out in many British cities.
How evil is evil? Begin’s betrayal
According to Peleg Levy, a documentary filmmaker who has researched the affair, the two sergeants who were kidnapped were actually working with the Haganah. Specifically, they were working assets of the SHAI, Haganah’s military intelligence unit.
The Irgun were having trouble finding British soldiers to kidnap, as the troops had been put on high alert and confined to barracks.
The two British NCOs, Martin and Paice , however were “easy prey”, according to Levy. They frequently met with Aharon Weinberg of the Haganah underground, and gave him intelligence information about the British forces.
An Irgun surveillance team followed the pair after one such meeting and abducted them.
But the Irgun were killing their own. Clifford Martin was a circumcised, Hebrew-speaking son of a Jewish mother. After his abduction, his mother pleaded for help to a Jewish member of Parliament.
Marvin Paice, was also "one of ours," Levy adds. "[Paice] was deeply involved in the country, he helped the Jews and he reported to them on the British plans." Paice's father appealed to Begin to have mercy on his son, in a letter addressed simply to "The commander of the Irgun."
Begin was unmoved. He ordered their execution anyway.
This is the sort of fanatical Zionist thinking, a willingness to kill one’s own people, that has led to the modern day “Hannibal Directive”.
The “last straw”?
There is general consensus the “Sergeants Affair” directly led to Prime Minister Attlee’s decision to permanently evacuate all British Forces until the end of the Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine.
While the incident may have had some effect, however, I think there were plenty of other reasons for the British to leave.
Officers Club bombings
Another strategy that could have hastened the British out of Palestine was the bombing campaign the Irgun conducted against the British Officers Clubs. They first blew up the club in Haifa, which killed and injured 30 people. They also bombed the Goldschmidt Officer’s Club, killing 17.
The most famous club bombing, however, occurred on March 1, 1948. There, the Irgun blew up the Bevingrad Officers Club in Jerusalem, killing 20 Britons and wounding 30 others.
Targeting Trains
The Zionist terrorists paid particular attention to destroying infrastructure. The LEHI and Irgun were particularly fond of attacking railway stations, but also derailing and destroying the trains themselves.
The Night of the Trains (or Operation Party) was a “combined” sabotage operation of the British railways in Palestine (“Palestine Railways”) on November 1, 1945. The operation was one of the first carried out by the Jewish Resistance Movement, before its official establishment, and symbolized its founding.
The LEHI were especially fond of hitting trains. On April 23, 1946, they mined a train outside Rehovot, killing five British officers.
On February 29, 1948 and again on March 31, the LEHI mined the military coaches of the Cairo-Haifa train, killing 28 British soldiers and wounding 35.
Targeted assassinations
The assassination of high ranking individuals is a Zionist tradition that persists even today. The LEHI were especially into assassinations, although they were not always successful.
They started on May 1, 1942, when they tried to kill Assistant Superintendent Geoffrey J. Morton, head of the CID in Tel Aviv and Jaffa and the policeman who killed the LEHI’s founder, with a huge improvised explosive device (IED).
On August 8, 1944 LEHI attempted to kill Harold MacMichael, high commissioner for Palestine and Transjordan. The commissioner and his wife narrowly escaped death in an ambush that LEHI had mounted on the eve of his replacement as high commissioner.
On September 29, 1944 LEHI successfully assassinated CID officer Thomas James Wilkin, who was the Commander of the Jewish Division and right-hand man of the above-mentioned Geoffrey J. Morton.
On November 6, 1944 LEHI assassinated Lord Moyne, British Deputy Resident Minister of State in Cairo. This high profile act was later described as “the shattering assassination of Britain’s minister of state in the Middle East”.
In an interview in 1993, Yitzhak Shamir (born Yitzhak Yezernitzky in Poland), the leader of the LEHI who went on to become a Prime Minister of Israel, explained why they killed Lord Moyne:
“Lord Moyne was the highest British official in the Middle East …. and because we fought against the British in this area, we took him for a target. This was the main reason for his assassination.
“Certainly, we had known about his hostile attitude towards Zionism, towards the idea of ingathering of the Jewish people here. He was against any Jewish aliyah, any Jewish immigration. He didn’t believe that there exists such a thing like a Jewish nation, or a Jewish people … and therefore, we decided to make this operation.”
Shamir became a wanted man. He was twice arrested by the British Palestinian Police, and twice escaped. He eventually had to seek asylum in France until the State of Israel wass declared in 1948.
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LEHI’s letter-bombs
In 1946, several British high officials, including Sir Stafford Cripps, Ernest Bevin, and Anthony Eden received letter bombs apparently sent by LEHI, according to Wikipedia.
In 1947, LEHI sent several letter bombs to President Harry Truman in the White House. They were intercepted by White House mail room workers, who were on alert because of similar looking letter bombs sent to British officials.
On June 4, 1947, eight LEHI letter bombs addressed to high British government officials, including Prime Minister Clement Attlee, were discovered in London.
On September 3, 1947, a postal bomb sent by either Irgun or LEHI exploded in the post office sorting room of the British War Office in London, injuring two.
The Irgun and LEHI abroad
According to the official Irgun website, the Zionist terror group was also well organised outside of Palestine, including in Europe and even the USA. The job for these cells was to spread hasbara about the Zionist war with their erstwhile allies, the British:
“As the Second World War approached its end and a revolt was proclaimed against the British rulers of Palestine, the Irgun mission in the United States announced the establishment of the “Hebrew Committee for National Liberation”. The committee engaged in diplomatic efforts and informed the US public of the Irgun’s war against the British.”
The Italian connection and the Rome Embassy bombing
One of the earliest “satellite offices” that the Zionists set up was in Italy. On 31 October 1946, the Irgun planted two suitcases containing timed explosives near the Embassy’s front entrance; the resulting blast injured two people and damaged the building’s residential section beyond repair. One of the Irgun’s intended targets, ambassador Noel Charles, was away on leave during the attack. In addition, the letter bombs that were sent to US President Harry Truman originated from Italy.
British Army HQ in Vienna
On August 4, 1947, the Irgun exploded two suitcase bombs in the Hotel Sacher, home of the British Army HQ. In addition, on August 12, the Irgun bombed a British troop train as it was passing through the Austrian Alps.
Other attacks
Zionist terrorists attacked a British police station in Jerusalem on November 27, 1945, resulting in the deaths of eight British government policemen and one Jewish militant.
The Irgun and LEHI also attacked British government facilities in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Jaffa on December 27, 1945, resulting in the deaths of ten British government personnel.
Zionists killed seven British government soldiers near Tel Aviv on April 25, 1946.
On September 9, 1946, LEHI killed two British officers by an explosion at a public building in Tel Aviv.
That same day, aBritish police sergeant, T.G. Martin, who had identified and arrested LEHI leader and future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, was assassinated near his Haifa home.
On January 12, 1947, A LEHI member carried out a truck bombing of a police station in Haifa, killing two British and two Arab constables, and wounding 140.
On April 25, 1947, LEHI bombed a British police compound, killing five policemen.
On May 15, 1947, LEHI conducted several operations, killing 3 British soldiers and wounding 7.
On June 28, 1947, LEHI fighters opened fire on a line of British soldiers waiting in line outside a Tel Aviv theatre, killing three soldiers and wounding two. One Briton was also killed and several wounded in a Haifa hotel.
Irgun bombed the police headquarters in Haifa on September 29, 1947, resulting in the deaths of four British policemen, four Arab policemen, and two Arab civilians.
On December 25, 1947 LEHI members machine-gunned two British soldiers in a Tel Aviv cafe
Irgun militants killed 11 Palestinian Arabs and two British government policemen in Jerusalem on December 29, 1947.
Irgun attacked the Pardes Hanna Army camp on April 6, 1948, killing 7 British soldiers, including the Commanding Officer.
The Zionist terrorists get their “reward”- Part 1
Saul Zadka, author of “Blood in Zion: How the Jewish Guerrillas drove the British Out of Palestine”, summed up the basic strategy of the Zionists in a Times of Israel article:
“They [the Zionists] realised getting rid of the British was the key to establishing Jewish sovereignty in Palestine”
Also, according to Zadka, the British faced a quandary:
“The British didn’t have an end game, they didn’t know what to do, and the insurgents’ operations affected the morale of the armed forces very badly. The British papers were saying, ‘If you can’t control Palestine, just get out.’ And it was very expensive to keep 100,000 soldiers there. So overall, holding onto Palestine was not worth it. The cost was too high.”
The British throw up their hands
In February 1947, the British Government then presented its own proposals to the Arab and Jewish representatives. Both sides rejected the proposals. Moreover, the Zionist forces aligned against them were just too strong:
“The Zionist Organization, fortified by new large-scale immigration, legal and illegal, well equipped forces, with [Haganah, Irgun, LEHI] providing the nucleus, and powerful foreign support, was unprepared to compromise on its long-standing objective towards which it had advanced so close — a Jewish State in Palestine.”
Faced with this situation, Great Britain decided to give up its mandate and hand over the Palestine problem to the United Nations.
On 18 February 1947, the Foreign Secretary stated in the House of Commons:
“…we have decided that we are unable to accept the scheme put forward either by the Arabs or by the Jews, or to impose ourselves a solution of our own. We have, therefore, reached the conclusion that the only course now open to us is to submit the problem to the judgement of the United Nations.”
Britain was weary. They had lost over 750 troops and police trying to put down the Zionist resistance. It was, at long last time to “just get out”.
The Zionists had won the war.
The Zionist terrorists get their “reward”- Part 2
The Zionist terror campaigns had worked: the British were leaving Palestine. But the fighting wasn’t over yet, and there still wasn’t a Jewish state.
The Haganah, Irgun and LEHI still had their work cut out for them.
The UN Partition Plan
In November 1947, the United Nations took up the mantle from the British and passed Resolution 181 (II). In this resolution, the UN proposed terminating the British Mandate and partitioning Palestine into two independent States, one Palestinian Arab and the other Jewish, with Jerusalem internationalised.
Both the Arabs and the Jews promptly rejected the plan, and, with the British removed from the board, the fighting started between the Zionist terror groups and the Arabs.
This was when the Zionists executed the Nakba, the great “catastrophe” of ethnic cleansing that saw the Zionists drive 750,000 Palestinian Arabs, Muslims and Christians off their land and out of their houses.
The Nakba
As Israeli historian Ilan Pappé notes:
As warfare among Jews and Palestinians increased, the Jewish leaders’ plans culminated in a meeting in March 1948 which decided on a “Plan D” [Plan Dalet], the ’systematic expulsion of the Palestinians from vast areas of the country’.”
Plan Dalet proceeded all through the beginning of 1948, right up until the Zionists formally declared the State of Israel.
The British, defeated, stayed in their barracks. The British commander in the territory, General Sir Gordon Macmillan, had 50,000 troops in Palestine but was under strict directives from London not to get embroiled in military action against either Arabs or Jews.
“This meant that huge areas of Palestine, notably the towns of Haifa and Jaffa but also numerous rural villages, could now be taken over by the Israelis without fear of a British response.”
Indeed, in April 1948 British forces announced to the Jewish authorities there that they would be withdrawing from Palestine altogether.
This “civil war” phase of the 1947–49 Palestine War ended with Israel’s declaration of statehood on 15 May 1948.
The British withdrawal from Palestine happened the very next day.
The Zionists had their reward: a Jewish State.
But now there was a new challenge: it seemed that the United Nations actually intended to enforce its Partition Plan on Palestine.
The Zionists could not allow the Partition Plan to be realised. It was time to resort to some “next level” terrorism.
The Assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte
The most egregious, brazen and impactful terror act ever perpetrated by the Zionists was the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat who was appointed “United Nations Mediator in Palestine” on 20 May 1948.
Bernadotte’s appointment was in accordance with UNGA Resolution 186 of 14 May 1948. Specifically, Bernadotte was appointed to negotiate between the Israeli and Palestinian sides, after Israel’s so-called “War of Independence” in 1948, and in accordance with UN Resolution 181 (the above-mentioned “Partition Plan”).
Bernadotte’s appointment was historic and widely celebrated as it marked the first time that the United Nations would take a role as mediator in a conflict.
The “Bernadotte Plan”
To implement the UN’s Partition Plan, Bernadotte suggested various resolutions, eventually settling on a formulation that affirmed the the existence of the state of Israel while at the same time firmly supporting the Palestinian right of return, advocating that Palestinians expelled from their lands and properties during the Nakba should be allowed to return and reclaim them. Those who did not return, he said, should be repatriated, resettled and financially compensated.
He wrote:
“It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries.”
Clearly the Bernadotte Plan was a non-starter for the Zionist terrorists and the leaders of the State of Israel. They had declared their independence just four months earlier; they had fought a war to establish the nation of Israel on the land of Israel, and they were not about to let some blue-blooded Swede deprive them of what God had promised to Abraham.
Consequently, when the Count submitted the ‘Bernadotte Plan’ to the UN General Assembly on 16 September 1948, it set off a firestorm of protest among the Zionist militants and paramilitary groups, who feared that the plan would actually be approved and implemented.
Zionist outrage
Zionists believed that the suggestion Bernadotte offered was “more pro the Arab sides and would mean Israel would lose the territories it conquered during the war and would receive even less than what was offered in the UN Partition Plan for Palestine”.
LEHI called Bernadotte a British agent who had cooperated with the Nazis in World War II. The organisation considered his plan to be a threat to its goal of Israeli independence on both banks of the Jordan River. They decided to assassinate him.
On Friday 17 September 1948, LEHI terrorists ambushed the Count’s 3-car convoy and started killing:
“The terrorists, wearing khaki shorts and peaked caps, left their jeep, found Bernadotte in the second car of the convoy, and one man, later discovered to be Yehoshua Cohen, fired a Schmeisser automatic pistol into the car, spraying the interior with bullets…”
Cohen fired six rounds into the UN mediator and another 18 at Colonel Andre Seraut, a French military officer who was sitting next to him. Seraut was killed immediately, while Bernadotte was rushed to hospital and died shortly after.
The other LEHI members shot the tires of the rest of the convoy, and all the terrorists escaped to the religious community of Sha’arei Pina, where they hid with haredi LEHI sympathisers for a few days before fleeing to Tel Aviv in the back of a furniture truck.
On September 18, the body of Count Bernadotte was flown to Haifa and then to Sweden, where he was buried on his wife’s birthday. The Israeli government subsequently “cracked down on LEHI”, arresting many of its members and confiscating their arms. LEHI disbanded — AGAIN, “largely due to public condemnation”.
At least, that is what the Zionists would have you believe.
The aftermath: Israel versus The World
I have treated the assassination of Count Bernadotte as something separate from the “War of Independence” that was fought against the British and then the Arabs.
This is because the assassination of Count Bernadotte was the first real “FUCK YOU” delivered by Israel to the United Nations and the world community.
The newly formed State of Israel maintained that the assassination of Bernadotte — and the subsequent disappearance of his “Bernadotte Plan” — was carried out by some “rogue elements” of the Jewish Resistance Movement, namely the LEHI or Stern Gang.
But the LEHI was officially disbanded on May 29 1948. How then, were they allowed to conduct this assassination of Count Bernadotte, the UN envoy who was tasked with implementing a “two-state solution” in Palestine?
The answer is obvious.
Terrorists were part of the Zionist project
The Haganah, Irgun and LEHI were all absorbed into the Israeli state — as were their violent, terrorist, Jewish supremacist ideologies.
The assassination of Count Bernadotte was — supposedly — carried out by members of the LEHI who were still active three months after their supposed “disbandment”.
How stupid do they think we are?
The fact is, the newly formed State of Israel did not want the UN Partition Plan. They did not want a “two-state solution”.
THEY STILL DON’T WANT ONE.
The fact is, the assassination of Bernadotte was carried out by the Israeli Government. Bernadotte wanted to internationalise Jerusalem and limit the borders of the new Jewish state. His murder helped shift partition from 55 percent of Palestine to the Jewish state to 78 percent. That was reason enough for Israeli leaders to want him dead.
Count Bernadotte was the first real chance for negotiating a peaceful solution for Palestine, one that could have accommodated both Jews and Arabs. But we never got the chance to find out, because the Zionist terrorists KILLED HIM.
Israel is a terrorist state — and here’s why
Israel is a state obsessed with terrorism. They see terrorists and terrorism as their one abiding, universal enemy.
Every Palestinian killed by police or the IDF is a “terrorist”.
Everyone in Hezbollah is a “terrorist”.
Hamas is not a “resistance movement”. It is a “terrorist organisation”.
Iran is an enemy not because of a strategic threat to Israel, but because they are the “world’s biggest supporter of terrorism”.
No wonder, then, that the Israelis are the global experts on terrorism and counter-terrorism, and they train police in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries.
Terror, more than anything else, DEFINES ISRAEL.
In fact, that is the reason that the Israelis were openly celebrating when the US was attacked on September 11, 2001; why Netanyahu himself said that the attacks were “good for Israel” — the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent “War on Terror” served to join the US and Israel in a “terror pact” in which Israel’s perceived terror threats (e.g., Iran) became America’s perceived terror threats.
Israelis love terrorism
It is no wonder that Israelis love terrorism — after all, they invented it. But there are very practical geopolitical and strategic reasons for Israel’s obsession with terrorism.
First, defining themselves as a plucky band of anti-terrorist crusaders is a great hasbara narrative (hasbara is the Israeli word for propaganda). Such a narrative serves to always portray Israel as the victim, which is important to maintaining the world’s sympathy towards Israel. The tragedy of the Holocaust can only go so far — Israel is in constant need of new threats to justify its more dubious (illegal) actions.
The mantra, “Israel has a right to defend itself” thus becomes a dogmatic expression used to deflect any and all criticism of Israeli actions abroad.
Israelis love terrorists
“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” is a quaint expression that ha sbecome poular since Reagan’s “Dirty Wars” in the 1980’s. But this aphorism was not around in the 1940s. Back then, a terrorist was a terrorist. And in the case of the Irgun and the LEHI or Stern Gang, they were PROUD to call themselves terrorists.
Yitzahk Shamir and Menachem Begin were both terrorists. They called themselves such.
And as such, they were both wanted for MURDER by the British administration in Palestine. Begin had ordered the brutal execution of gthe two British sergeants; Shamir had carried out assassinations of Lord Moyne and Count Bernadotte; both had ordered extrajudicial executions and the slaughter of innocent women and children.
And yet, both of them became Prime Ministers of Israel. In fact Begin was the founder of what later became today’s Likud Party.
Moreover, although the State of Israel officially condemned the Irgun and LEHI organisations “as terrorists”, they nonetheless have, over the years, quietly instituted awards, ribbons and medals for those who belonged to those groups.
Yep. The Israelis LOVE TERRORISTS. As long as they are Jewish.
Yitzhak Shamir, who went from leading the LEHI to leading the Mossad before he became PM, is a source of insight into the Zionist view of terrorism. In 1943 he wrote an article in the LEHI underground organisation journal Hehazit (The Front), in which he made the case for Jewish terrorism:
“Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: ‘Ye shall blot them out to the last man’.”
If this sounds similar to the genocidal pronouncements made in erecent months by current Israeli leaders, it is no coincidence. Yes, Israel is committing genocide, but Israel is also committing terrorism on an industrial scale, and has been doing so ever since it was founded.
Terrorism as warfare
For Israelis, terrorism is not just a weapon of war — it is war itself. Terrorism, after all, is what got the Zionists their state in the first place, by chasing the British out of Palestine. Terrorism helped Israel expand their state, by assassinating Count Bernadotte. And terrorism has — until recently — helped the Israelis maintain their Apartheid state.
It should be noted that the Israeli practice of “mowing the grass” — periodically mass murdering hundreds of Palestinians through airstrikes in Gaza — is nothing but terrorism. The checkpoints, the roundups, the mass detentions, the torture, the beat-downs, the demolition of houses — these are all techniques of terror.
The state-sanctioned pogroms that the radical Zionist settlers are perpetrating on Palestinians in the West Bank are also a form of terrorism.
And now, what has been going on in Gaza since October 7, 2023 is the most extreme form of terrorism. It is certainly not warfare in the traditional sense.
“Every accusation a confession”
Those of us who make a practice of de-bunking and refuting Israeli hasbara narratives like to use an expression: when dealing with Zionists, every accusation is a confession.
This means that when a Zionist accuses a person or a group of committing some heinous act, it is probably because Israel is committing — or has committed — that same act themselves.
This was particularly true in the aftermath of the October 7 Al Aqsa Flood Operation by Hamas. Immediately, the Israeli hasbara factory went into overdrive. For example, Israeli hasbarists in the military, police or in groups like Zaka began recounting horrible stories to reporters: they claimed that babies had been beheaded; babies had been burned alive; babies had been put into ovens; babies had been cut from their mother’s womb and stabbed; systematic, “weaponised” rape was used.
The truth is that NONE of these things had been done. At least, NOT BY HAMAS.
However, these very same horrible things were committed by the Irgun and LEHI/Stern Gang terrorists in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948.
Earlier that morning, armed members of Zionist terrorist militias, the Stern Gang and the Irgun Zvai Leumi, invaded the pastoral village and slaughtered anyone with a beating pulse. They beheaded babies, burned a child alive in the communal oven, and committed acts of sexual assault and systematic rape.
Zionist terrorists slaughtered hundreds of villagers. Unlike October 7, however, we actually have documentation. Jacques de Reynier, the Swiss representative of the International Red Cross, and British Assistant Inspector General of the Criminal Investigation Division, Richard Catling, collected the testimonies of women who survived the Deir Yassin massacre. Catling wrote:
“The majority of those women are very shy and reluctant to relate their experiences especially in matters concerning sexual assault…There is, however, no doubt that many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking [Zionists]. Many young school-girls were raped and later slaughtered. Old women were also molested. One story is current concerning a case in which a young girl was literally torn into two. Many infants were also butchered and killed.”
In 1982, the then-commander of the Haganah, Zvi Ankoi, described the atrocities he witnessed at the scene of the Deir Yassin massacre:
“I saw cut-off genitalia and women’s crushed stomachs. It was direct murder. Soldiers shot everyone they saw, including women and children. Parents begged commanders to stop the slaughter, to please stop shooting.”
It is no wonder, then, whence these stories of atrocities come. The Israeli hasbarists are simply recasting an episode from Zionist history, using it to demonise the very people against whom they perpetrated these atrocities in the first place.
The evilness of the Zionist mindset is admirable in its perfect efficacy.
#End
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This is an excellent article. I’ve spent 20+ years studying the history of Zionism and Israel. You’ve put so much information in this one post. Few would (or would have the time) to take on the necessary study to acquire all of this information. You’ve made the true history of Zionism and terrorism accessible to everyone. It should put the current genocide in Gaza in perspective. Thank you for this very important article. I hope it’s widely shared. Everyone needs to see the realities of Zionism. The zionists have controlled the narrative for far too long. You’ve made it possible for people to fight back, equipped with facts. This is a huge step in effectively bringing an end to the Zionists’ oppression of the Palestinians and their control of the US and other western governments.
Americans are already opposed to Biden’s support for and complicity with this genocide. It certainly puts his declaration, “I’m a Zionist” in a very different light. He can’t be so obtuse that he doesn’t know the truth about Zionism. He’s proudly declared that he is a terrorist as well as a racist.
Again, thank you for this very important information.
Yes but between the 1940’s and now is when Jewish people in the U.S. became “white”. And so they inherited the privilege of “whiteness” - colonialism and overlordship.
Zionism only succeeds within this framework. And it won’t be reversed until that framework is reversed.
Now it should be fairly clear while the members of the colonial transatlantic warlord organization all see the survival of the colonial project “Israel” as an existential one, rather than terrorism. It’s no different than how they went and invaded the Americas then called the natives “savages” and “outlaws” and genocide them.