Count Folke Bernadotte: Sweden's Servant of Peace (2010)
historytoday.com
historytoday.com
(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 Swedish count who defended Biafra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustaf_von_Rosen
von Rosen and the Biafran Air Force is quite fascinating.
Who knows if Nansen too would have, if he had lived to see the rise of Hitler. Probably not, as he was usually fairly ambivalent about politics, but it wouldn't have been terribly surprising either.
And yet a lot of young people somehow think they were good guys.
Reality is really context dependent, and with lots of nuance. Obviously being anti-fascist and helped out taking down the Nazis makes you more of a "good guy" than "bad guy" for that specific moment, but obviously that doesn't mean the USSR or Russia is exclusively the "good guys" always, which goes the same for every country out there.
Where are you finding these young people praising the USSR though? It always seems like a talking point from conservatives on the internet, as I'm never able to find these elusive USSR-praisers in real-life. There is a ton of people ironically saying they love USSR, but surely these are not the people you're talking about?
I have no idea what was bad about the fascists that wasn't equally true of the Soviets - the underlying systems of thought and actions were essentially the same. There is no sense in which I can see the Soviets were the "good guys." They were simply allies of convenience, and the net result of the war was that half of Europe was handed over to them and lived under this horrific regime.
Trumps America soon: hold my beer
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.
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.
> One of the chief organisers of the assassination was Yitzhak Shamir, who became Israel’s prime minister in 1984.
Exactly.
How exactly did they go from these constant attacks including on a close ally like the British to “Greatest Ally” status.
I think it goes to show the limits of the conflict between the British and the jews of palestine. It was never personal and therefore while there was much anger and resentment, there was never any hate.
The history of how the alliance came about is fascinating. It started with the suez war. Their relationship with the US came about at the same time as the breakdown with the French and was helped by the fact that the US saw Israel as a convenient proxy against the Soviets.
The idea that Zionists were just a colony "looking to Britain for guidance" is an understatement. They were a de facto rival colonial project that used terror to expel the British, the Zionists even ironically described the British as occupiers of Palestine.[0] The Zionists weren't looking for "guidance," they were busy planting bombs[1]. Your claim that it was "never personal" and there was "no hate" is a disgusting lie. Tell that to the families of the British sergeants the Irgun hanged and booby-trapped. Tell that to the scores of British officials murdered in the King David Hotel bombing. It was a vicious Zionist terror campaign, and pretending otherwise is obscene.
Finally, your "convenient proxy" explanation sanitizes the ugly truth. The West didn't ally with Israel despite its history of terrorism, but they allied with it because of it. Israel's violent founding proved it could be a ruthless and effective enforcer for Western imperial interests. That is the real foundation of your "special relationship."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
Something the Palestinians could never muster, and one of the reasons they are still in this position, stateless under the control of Hamas
The Altalena incident was not a moral battle against terrorism, it was a cynical power struggle. Ben-Gurion needed to establish the state's monopoly on force and could not tolerate Menachem Begin's private terrorist gang. After the confrontation, Irgun fighters were not punished. They were absorbed into the IDF, where their terrorist skills became state assets.
This move whitewashes what the Irgun actually was. Long before "Israel" absorbed them, they were internationally recognized as terrorists (even by the US AND UK!) for terrorism e.g. like the King-David Hotel bombing. In a famous letter, Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt called Begin's organization terrorists and "closely akin in its organization, methods, [and] political philosophy to the Nazi and Fascist parties." The ultimate proof that Israel never rejected its terrorist ideology is the career of the Irgun commander himself, Menachem Begin. He was never tried as a traitor or a terrorist. He founded the party that would become Likud and was later elected Prime Minister. Israel didn't purge its terrorist founders, it eventually put one in charge of Israel.
When the same thing could have happened in the 1990s with the Palestinians, the exact opposite result happened. A huge mistake from the Palestinian side which left them way worse off (and only getting worse)
In Israel 40 years passed before he was elected as prime minister, by the way
If they became part of a nation army, divided across the different units, and most of their men discharged after the war, then these organizations disappeared
Had the IDF adopted the Etzel tactics of bombing the British as you suggest that would probably cause immense issues in the next desert tank war fought in 1956
The Irgun didn't "vanish." Its violent, expansionist and terrorist ideology succeeded. It then took over the "state", making the old brand name redundant. Why would Menachem Begin need a private terrorist gang when he could one day command the entire military to achieve his goals?
And your argument about tactics is a pathetic diversion. The state adopted the Irgun's core ethos, a readiness to use extreme, disproportionate violence and terrorism for political ends. This is the "state" whose military ruthlessly attacked[0] its own "greatest Ally", an American naval intelligence ship, the USS Liberty including its crew, and later formalized its terrorist strategy of collective punishment into an explicit military policy, the Dahiya Doctrine[1]. The violence wasn't abandoned. It was industrialized. Instead of a terrorist bombing a hotel, Prime Minister Begin used the full force of the air force to carpet-bomb Lebanon and Gaza.
The Irgun didn't disappear. It just took over the "state" and evolved its terrorism by trading its primitive zionist bombs for high-tech fighter jets.
Your arguments have been reduced to changing the Irgun to some metaphor or what you don't like about Israel actions.
This doesn't change the fact that Israel had handled it terrorist problem in the transition to a state, while the Palestinians never succeeded in doing so, which had led them to be controlled by such an entity, culminating in that entity taking them on a national suicide in 2023
That's not a "metaphor", but a direct and documented political bloodline. The Irgun's violent, expansionist and terrorist ideology was channeled directly into the Herut party[0], which became the Likud party, which put the Irgun's commander, Menachem Begin, in the Prime Minister's office. The Dahiya Doctrine isn't a metaphor, but Irgun's philosophy of collective punishment aka terrorism written down as official state policy.
And let's put down this already debunked lie you keep repeating. Israel did not "handle" its terrorist problem. It institutionalized it. It promoted it. It didn't have a version of Altalena to crush its extremists. It had an Altalena to consolidate power, and then it put the terrorist leader of the Altalena in charge of the entire "state". You didn't solve your terrorism problem. You made terrorism your state policy, which now manifested itself in the inevitable conclusion of Genocide.
[0] The same Herut party btw about whom Einstein said: "a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties." - https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2014-12-04/ty-article/.premiu...
First you claim the Zionist extremists were an "absolute minority." The Revisionist Zionism of the Irgun was never a fringe belief, it was a powerful and central pillar of the Zionist movement. And in the end, their ideology won. They weren't just "integrated", they took over.
Furthermore, the idea that they were "subdued" is laughable. You do not "subdue" a movement by absorbing its members into your army and then electing its terrorist commander as your Prime Minister. Menachem Begin was not defeated, he was promoted. The state didn't end the Irgun's terrorism, it nationalized it, making the Irgun's tactics and goals the official policy of the "state". Finally, your comparison to the Palestinians in the 1990s is a disgusting and intellectually bankrupt false equivalence. You are comparing an internal power struggle between factions of a ruthless colonizing power with the struggle of an occupied people living under a brutal military occupation. There is no parallel. It's a classic victim-blaming tactic designed to absolve the occupier of its responsibility and guilt https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
Regarding my comparison, I think it's very valid. The Palestinians had a huge leadership problem which led them here. Among many things such as rejecting peace offers, most stem from bowing down to extremists, lying to their own people and never being able to have their own version of Altalena
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 unified colonial project of dispossessing Palestinians.
The Altalena was a colonizing force consolidating its monopoly on violence to better oppress and dispossess the Palestinians. You cannot compare that to a occupied population struggling under a foreign military boot. Palestinian "leadership problems" and disunity are a direct result of decades of Israeli assassinations, imprisonment, and engineered fragmentation.[2]
[1] 'The Dark History of "Left-Wing" Zionism' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehp9PZo4UR0
[2] https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...
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 the first paper of a humanities bachelor dorm room.
Don't you think Palestinians have a terrorist organization problem, currently? Do you think they can do something about it?
Your last question is an amusing piece of Zionist projection. "Don't you think Palestinians have a terrorist organization problem?" - That's rich, coming from an apologist of a colonial project founded by terrorists, led by terrorists, and whose state terrorism has culminated in genocide. The very group you're pointing at was propped up with cash by your own Prime Minister, Netanyahu, as a deliberate strategy to divide Palestinians. https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...
The core problem Palestinians have is a Zionist occupation problem. What they also have is an internationally recognized right to armed resistance against a foreign military occupier. Zionism, from the King David Hotel to the Dahiya Doctrine, is the one with the "terrorist problem." You just call it your "state" https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
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
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.
You demand the people being crushed under a boot "take responsibility," while giving a pass to Zionists who have all the power and are the perpetrators responsible for it all. It's a sick moral inversion. You cry about a lack of peace while defending the Zionist entity that has demonstrated for a century that it is not interested in peace, only in surrender and domination. Also, the audacity to speak of a "prospect for peace" when Zionists has systematically sabotaged it at every turn, even murdering diplomats during negotiations.[0]
Another classic Zionist deflection is to make it about "Jews" so you can deflect from the racist[1], European colonial project that they are resisting. This is not a religious war. It is an anti-colonial struggle against Zionism. The only people who insist on making it about "Jews" are the Zionists themselves, because it's their most effective propaganda shield.
The violence you clutch your pearls over is the inevitable, desperate product of a hundred years of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. You are blaming the oppressed for the consequences of their own oppression. It is the oldest and most pathetic trick in the colonial playbook.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/12/israels-strike...
[1] "The British told us that there are some hundred thousand negroes [kushim in Hebrew] and for those there is no value." - Weizmann, quoted by Arthur Ruppin in: Yosef Heller, Bama'avak Lamedinah , Jerusalem, 1984, p.140.
One of the historical motivations for colonialism is seeing the 'natives' as merely children without agency that need the benevolent west's help, which is the exact dehumanizing vibe applied whenever someone suggests Palestinians may also have the concept of responsibility
You are dishonestly confusing explaining the context of oppression with denying agency. Acknowledging that Palestinian resistance is a direct response to a century of your violence is the ultimate sign of respecting their agency. It is treating them as human beings who fight back. Demanding they politely submit to their own ethnic-cleansing and extermination is what treats them like objects.
And let's be clear about who is actually echoing colonial propaganda. The ideology that sees natives as less than human is yours. It's the ideology of Weizmann, who called the Palestinians "kushim" of "no value." Don't you dare project your project's inherent, documented racism onto others while you are defending a genocidal apartheid ethno-state.
That seems very racist to me, why would you think a people capable of conducting an attack such as was done on October 7, is incapable of choosing more peaceful leadership? Why even the mere thought of the Palestinians being able to affect their future amounts to heresy?
Removing agency from natives is the mark of colonial thought, and it is no surprise that western thought that is stuck in colonial times (post-colonialism) kept the old colonial racist stereotypes
And your question about choosing "peaceful leadership" is nauseatingly cynical as it is ironic. You are defending a genocidal apartheid ethno-state whose own Prime Minister, Netanyahu, admitted on record that his strategy was to fund Hamas precisely to ensure Palestinians would never have a unified leadership capable of negotiating for a state.[1] You assassinate their diplomats, jail their leaders, and prop up Hamas, and then you have the audacity to blame them for how they resist your genocidal colonization campaign. Don't you dare project your colonial project's inherent, documented racism onto others. Your rhetoric is nothing but manipulative deflection and projection.
[1] https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...
Shamir too, saw no further use for violence after 1948 and eventually took to politics and only in that theater did he engage with his mortal enemies on the left.
I can't help but contrast that with the actions of Yasser Arafat who unleashed the second intifada on Israel after signing the Oslo Accords or hamas who used the de facto palestinian state of gaza as a base to launch attacks and missiles at Israel.
The idea that violence for him and Shamir was just a "means to an end" that stopped in 1948 is a complete fantasy. They simply nationalized their terrorism. Begin didn't find peace. He swapped his Irgun uniform for a state uniform to launch the brutal 1982 invasion of Lebanon and to oversee a massive, violent expansion of illegal settlements. His "peace" with Egypt was a strategic masterstroke. It neutralized his biggest military threat, freeing him up to colonize Palestine with impunity.
This continuous, state-sanctioned violence was never just random. It was the implementation of an ideology that sees Palestinians as subhuman obstacles. And now, that project has reached its logical and horrifying conclusion. It has culminated in what leading human rights organizations like Amnesty International and hundreds of the world's foremost genocide scholars explicitly call it: the crime of genocide.[1][2]
So your attempt to contrast this with Palestinian leaders is a disgusting exercise in victim-blaming. You are defending the architects of a political project that resulted in genocide, while slandering its victims for resisting their own extermination. It is a morally bankrupt position that rests on a complete inversion of reality.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/01/israel-committ...
[2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-inter...
So that means the terrorists, especially the leaders, were tried and punished for their crimes?
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.
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.
All while Israel was rapidly expanding its settlements on the West Bank. States generally don't build settlements on territory they intend to relinquish.