Swedish soldier, human rights activist and diplomat. He was killed while he was mediating between Arab countries and Israel on behalf of the United Nations.
Half of Palestine had been occupied and Palestinians had to take refuge in the Arab world in hopes of returning to their homes.
Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, with "blue blood" running through his veins, reached Jerusalem in the process.
Bernadotte, the nephew of King Gustaf V of Sweden, was the first UN representative appointed to this difficult conflict area.
The special committee that appointed him had a key recommendation: 'impartiality.'
Folke Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg (2 January 1895 – 17 September 1948) was a Swedish nobleman and diplomat. In World War II he negotiated the release of about 31,000 prisoners from German concentration camps, including 450 Danish Jews from the Theresienstadt camp.
But being 'neutral' required the refugees to advocate for their return home, and the return of refugees meant the expulsion of Jews arriving from Europe to the 'promised land' from the homes they occupied.
The solution method of the newcomers was terror.
Four months after his arrival in Jerusalem, Folke Bernadotte died in an ambush by Israeli terrorists on September 17.
Like subsequent terrorist incidents, this act would remain unsolved.
But Count Bernadotte, who died at the age of 53, would become the first international witness of the injustices in Palestine.
Despite all his efforts in the four months, he spent in Jerusalem, he could not solve any problem, but it certainly contributed to the correct writing of history.
Bernadotte was the first to travel the long 'mediation path', after which many northern diplomats continued his legacy.
After the Count, Dag Carl Hammarskjöld, followed by Gunnar Jarring, took up the post.
Palestine's cause was written on Swedish walls and reflected in Norwegian rivers.
All the negotiators continued Bernadotte's legacy, diplomats and soldiers followed in his footsteps.
He left a lasting mark in long diplomacy and military personnel behind him.
These soldiers were different; They were the kind of soldiers who didn't start wars and prevented wars, protecting civilians rather than killing them.
May 2009
Yeshua Zitler, the former leader of the illegal Jewish organization Lehi and the mastermind of the 1948 murder of Count Bernadotte, the UN's Middle East mediator, has died.
In the news in the Israeli press, it was stated that Yeshua Zitler, who was responsible for the Jerusalem area of Lehi, a radical armed organization that carried out attacks against the British mandate between 1940 and 1948, also known as Stern, died at the age of 92.
Known to lead Lehi's men during the attack on the Palestinian village of Deir Yasin, one of the bloodiest massacres of the Israeli Arab War, in which 120 civilians were killed, Zetler, who was known to lead Lehi's men, gave the order in May 1948 to kill Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, whom the UN appointed a mediator for the Middle East, but in 1993. you had accepted.
Count Bernadotte was killed by Lehi on September 17, 1948, when Israel sought independence. Zezler, on the other hand, ceased his political activities after 1948 and no investigation was carried out against him.
Lehi, an armed Zionist resistance organization advocating the abolition of the British mandate, the liberalization of Jewish immigration, and the establishment of a Jewish state, was founded in 1940 by Avraham Stern, who left the Irgun organization. Although it was the smallest among the Zionist organizations established in Palestine with its faceless member in those years, Lehi, known for its actions and assassinations against the British, ended its actions with the establishment of the Israeli Army on May 28, 1948.