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Count Folke Bernadotte: Sweden's Servant of Peace (2010)

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Re: Count Folke Bernadotte: Sweden's Servant of Peace (2010)

#61
post #13
post #9

The Stern gang, who killed him, became the IDF (along with the Haganah and the Irgun). These groups performed the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that allowed Israel to be built on Palestinian land (commonly known as the Nakba). > One of the chief organisers of the assassination was Yitzhak Shamir, who became Israel’s prime minister in 1984. Exactly.

The Irgun was forcibly integrated into the IDF, claiming dead and almost triggering a civil war. Something the Palestinians could never muster, and one of the reasons they are still in this position, stateless under the control of Hamas

The context from the Palestinian side is quite different and comparing the two is flawed for many reasons:

There was never a consensus on the Oslo accords from both sides. While the Israeli Labor pushed for the process, the Likud and the rest of right wingers worked thoroughly to undermine it. And on the Palestinian side, the OLP, essentially Fatah, went on to accept terms every other Palestinian faction refused to adhere to (demilitarized state, practically land-locked on a mozaic of patches that amounts to a fraction of the country's total area and surrounded everywhere with ever-increasing Israeli settlement projects.

That effectively weakened Fatah's position which essentially morphed into a caretaker on behalf of the Israelis for the day-to-day. And the resistance weight shifted from secular factions to the Hamas.

Re: Count Folke Bernadotte: Sweden's Servant of Peace (2010)

#62
post #58
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

After having your cherry-picked "facts" dismantled, your last resort is to feign intellectual superiority and pretend to be above the conversation. It's not a "childish" story of good versus evil. It's an analysis of cause and effect, which you are desperately trying to whitewash. You claim you "struggle to see the connection" between the Irgun and the Dahiya Doctrine[1]. Let me make it simple for you, since you find…

That's an interesting claim to make three years ago, but because we saw the actual Dahiya doctrine play out in the Dahiya, this is a bit of a reach.

The end result was not some massive terror bombing, but warnings before bombing which gave enough time for civilian evacuations and the targets themselves were indeed civilian buildings, but those that either stored massive amount of munitions, as can clearly be seen in secondary explosion videos or bunkers of Hezbollah leaders such as Nasrallah, as confirmed by Hezbollah confirmation of casualties.

All of these make the above valid military targets, and makes your claim the primary reason was to cause terror as a bit dubious.

Actually the reverse had happened, as weapons that were used against Israeli civilian population as terror weapons (non-precise artillery rockets) were destroyed

In any case you still haven't shown how the IDF planners behind these were all part of the Irgun Forever secret society, so in any case the connection is a huge logical leap

Re: Count Folke Bernadotte: Sweden's Servant of Peace (2010)

#63

Another notable Swede is Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who issued Swedish passports and sheltered thousands of Jews in Budapest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raoul_Wallenberg . He disappeared and died in Russian captivity. (Random lighthearted fact: because his exact date of death is disputed, Google's AI summary in the search results tells me his age is 113.) On another scale, Carl Gustaf von Rosen was a Swed…

"Von Rosen's happiness with his second wife, Hanny, ended with the outbreak of World War II. She joined the resistance, was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Dachau in Germany. After the war, she committed suicide[citation needed] in 1949."

What a bizarre way of phrasing things. His happiness with his second wife ended with the outbreak of the war? They say this specific thing as if they were referring to some marital breach, not seeing their time together be destroyed through arrest by a genocidally monstrous secret police agency, internment in one of its concentration camps and later suicide, probably from the trauma of surviving those two events. Yes, such a thing will destroy.... marital happiness, to say the least.

Re: Count Folke Bernadotte: Sweden's Servant of Peace (2010)

#64

Another notable Swede is Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who issued Swedish passports and sheltered thousands of Jews in Budapest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raoul_Wallenberg . He disappeared and died in Russian captivity. (Random lighthearted fact: because his exact date of death is disputed, Google's AI summary in the search results tells me his age is 113.) On another scale, Carl Gustaf von Rosen was a Swed…

"Von Rosen's happiness with his second wife, Hanny, ended with the outbreak of World War II. She joined the resistance, was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Dachau in Germany. After the war, she committed suicide[citation needed] in 1949." What a bizarre way of phrasing things. His happiness with his second wife ended with the outbreak of the war? They say this specific thing as if they were referring to some mari…

> What a bizarre way of phrasing things.

Given the subject there's a good chance that phrasing was written by someone with English as a second or third language and European 'good enough' pidgin English grammar.

If it grates on you excessively there's always the option of editing the paragraph.

Re: Count Folke Bernadotte: Sweden's Servant of Peace (2010)

#65
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The expected Zionist modus operandi, whitewash Zionist crimes, then blame the victim for responding. Your "socialist" argument is a weak attempt to hide behind a political label. It doesn't matter what they called themselves. The "socialist"[1] Haganah and Palmach were the main engines of the Nakba. The distinction between them and the Irgun was a public relations strategy, a "good cop, bad cop" routine for the same…

I am merely stating a fact, the poster above tried to say that the Irgun had popular support, that is false. The population was socialist, that is a fact While your representation of what happened in Altalena is so overly post-colonialist it almost reads like satire. You keep failing to address my original argument, while trying to show any keyword I write is some part of a post-colonial masterplan straight out of th…

If Irgun and the Stern gang didn't have popular support it would have been trivial for the Haganah to disarm them at any point in the 1940's. Instead, the Haganah frequently cooperated with the irredentist groups. The "good cop, bad cop" analogy is exactly right. The groups were useful for handling sensitive tasks that jeopardized international Jewry's support for the Yishuv. Irgun coordinated the attack on Deir Yassin with Haganah liasons. After the fact, the Yishuv leadership denied that and wrung their hands. How could they have know that they would commit a massacre against civilians? What an unforeseen tragedy...

Re: Count Folke Bernadotte: Sweden's Servant of Peace (2010)

#66
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Von Rosen's happiness with his second wife, Hanny, ended with the outbreak of World War II. She joined the resistance, was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Dachau in Germany. After the war, she committed suicide[citation needed] in 1949." What a bizarre way of phrasing things. His happiness with his second wife ended with the outbreak of the war? They say this specific thing as if they were referring to some mari…

> What a bizarre way of phrasing things. Given the subject there's a good chance that phrasing was written by someone with English as a second or third language and European 'good enough' pidgin English grammar. If it grates on you excessively there's always the option of editing the paragraph.

grate? Nah, just amusing enough to mention.

Re: Count Folke Bernadotte: Sweden's Servant of Peace (2010)

#67
post #65
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am merely stating a fact, the poster above tried to say that the Irgun had popular support, that is false. The population was socialist, that is a fact While your representation of what happened in Altalena is so overly post-colonialist it almost reads like satire. You keep failing to address my original argument, while trying to show any keyword I write is some part of a post-colonial masterplan straight out of th…

If Irgun and the Stern gang didn't have popular support it would have been trivial for the Haganah to disarm them at any point in the 1940's. Instead, the Haganah frequently cooperated with the irredentist groups. The "good cop, bad cop" analogy is exactly right. The groups were useful for handling sensitive tasks that jeopardized international Jewry's support for the Yishuv. Irgun coordinated the attack on Deir Yass…

Haganah only cooperated with the Irgun for a short while during the Jewish Resistance Movement which fell apart shortly when the Irgun went too extreme for their tastes.

To understand more You might want to read about the Saison where the Haganah cooperated with the British authorities against the Lehi and Etzel which had hundreds of members arrested.

Regarding popular support, due to management of immigration by the Jewish Agency and the facts of life in Israel at the time, the population was overly Socialist as I mentioned before, which can be seen in the respective parties sizes, this meant the politically they were completely on the other side of the political map.

It was also common for mainstream opinion to describe the Etzel and Lehi as terrorists, as can be seen for example in the 1946 World Zionist Congress

Re: Count Folke Bernadotte: Sweden's Servant of Peace (2010)

#68
post #61
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Irgun was forcibly integrated into the IDF, claiming dead and almost triggering a civil war. Something the Palestinians could never muster, and one of the reasons they are still in this position, stateless under the control of Hamas

The context from the Palestinian side is quite different and comparing the two is flawed for many reasons: There was never a consensus on the Oslo accords from both sides. While the Israeli Labor pushed for the process, the Likud and the rest of right wingers worked thoroughly to undermine it. And on the Palestinian side, the OLP, essentially Fatah, went on to accept terms every other Palestinian faction refused to a…

There was consensus in the Israeli public which fell apart gradually during Hamas suicide bombing campaign in the 1990s, while many Israelis naively believed in peace and refused to come to terms with Arafat actually leading the Second Intifada a few years into the Intifada.

Regarding a landlocked mosaic, that was the reality of the interim agreement but was far from the situation offered to the Palestinians in multiple subsequent peace plans, which were all rejected or effectively rejected through introducing terms that were untenable.

For example this map, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g0dv7rxxvo.

The issue was a combination of lack of popular support in the Palestine side, refusal to explain the terms of reality to their population and preferring to lean on the ethos of "resistance" which is an easier sale and cowardice in their leadership.

This of course does not talk about the Israeli leadership issues which are also numerous, but the issues I mentioned above go back to the forties and before, and Israeli leadership did achieve statehood, while the Palestinian one had always tried the all-or-nothing approach and were left with nothing.

Re: Count Folke Bernadotte: Sweden's Servant of Peace (2010)

#69
post #67
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Irgun and the Stern gang didn't have popular support it would have been trivial for the Haganah to disarm them at any point in the 1940's. Instead, the Haganah frequently cooperated with the irredentist groups. The "good cop, bad cop" analogy is exactly right. The groups were useful for handling sensitive tasks that jeopardized international Jewry's support for the Yishuv. Irgun coordinated the attack on Deir Yass…

Haganah only cooperated with the Irgun for a short while during the Jewish Resistance Movement which fell apart shortly when the Irgun went too extreme for their tastes. To understand more You might want to read about the Saison where the Haganah cooperated with the British authorities against the Lehi and Etzel which had hundreds of members arrested. Regarding popular support, due to management of immigration by the…

That is patently false. Publicly, the Yishuv was against underground organizations. Privately, there was much cooperation and coordination.

For example, Haganah handed Deir Yassin as a target to Irgun because they knew their fighters were ill-equipped to take on well-defended objectives. Indeed, they almost failed to capture the village so the Palmach had to come and help them quell the Arab resistance. The humiliated fighters took a bloody revenge on the Arab villagers. Afterwards, the Yishuv feigned outrage over the terrorist groups barbarism.

Later that year, Lehi murdered Folke Bernadotte. The Yishuv, again, feigned outrage and had many members arrested:

"Subsequently, many Stern members were disarmed and arrested, but nobody was charged with the killings, and the case, which was barely investigated, was closed. Stern suspects were detained after the assassination, but they were not treated like other prisoners. As Time magazine reported, these prisoners at Jaffa made their own rules, ripped bars from the windows and tore down the steel doors connecting their cells: “The Sternists threw open the door of the jail, disarmed the guards, directed traffic in the square where a great crowd had gathered. Some prisoners strolled off to the beach for a swim. Others relaxed with prison guards over coffee in a nearby café.”"

https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/04/05/the-demise-of-the-two-...

They were all pardoned a few months later.

Re: Count Folke Bernadotte: Sweden's Servant of Peace (2010)

#70
post #54
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Irgun was forcibly integrated into the IDF, claiming dead and almost triggering a civil war. So that means the terrorists, especially the leaders, were tried and punished for their crimes?

No, but it means twenty people died in the process of forcing them to disintegrate

That proves nothing. 100 times as many Palestinians have been killed in Fatah-Hamas skirmishes. Yet you still think the PA supports terrorism.
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