ABSTRACT
Over 50 years have passed since the UN mediator for Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, was assassinated in Jerusalem on 17 September 1948 by the ‘Freedom Fighters of Israel’ (Lohamei Herut Yisrael. Hebrew acronym: LEHY), the smallest and most extreme of the three military organizations of the Yishuv (as the Jewish community in Palestine was called before the State of Israel came into being). The announcement made after the assassination was issued by ‘The Fatherland Front’ (Hazit ha-Moledet), a ‘front’ brought into being for the purpose by LEHY and which disappeared immediately afterwards. It declared that Bernadotte had been ‘an obvious agent of the British enemy.’ 1 Now that the British and US documents have been made available, this serious allegation can be examined, and as a result it can safely be affirmed that the mediator acted in complete independence. He had no contact whatsoever with British or US diplomacy over the political proposals that sealed his fate. These proposals he presented in his first Report on 28 June 1948.
