Yehoshua Zettler; Stern Gang leader in Jerusalem who masterminded the assassination of UN mediator Count Bernadotte
Hyfler/Rosner
Yehoshua Zettler, who died on May 20 aged 91, was the former
commander in Jerusalem of the Fighters for the Freedom of
Israel, or Lehi (known to the British as the Stern Gang); it
was he who planned and supervised the assassination of the
United Nations mediator Count Folke Bernadotte on September
17 1948.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/5363193/Yehoshua-Zettler.html
Bernadotte, a member of the Swedish royal family, was sent
to the Middle East by the UN to mediate between Israelis and
Arabs over the future of Palestine.
He recommended revising the boundaries envisaged by the UN
Partition Plan of November 1947 to allow Palestinian
refugees back to their homes, and suggested that the UN
should take over control of Jerusalem. The plan was anathema
to many Israelis, and the Lehi members in Jerusalem
concluded that the best way to prevent its implementation
was to kill the mediator.
On September 10 1948, Lehi's leaders - among them Yisrael
Eldad, Nathan Yelin-Mor and Yitzhak Shamir (a future prime
minister of Israel) - met in a drab fourth-floor apartment
in Ben Yehuda Street, Tel Aviv, to discuss an assassination.
Zettler, who had come from Jerusalem, waited nervously in an
adjoining room. Shamir later noted: "The idea was conceived
in Jerusalem by Lehi members. Our opinion was asked, and we
offered no opposition."
Having secured this tacit agreement, Zettler sped back to
Jerusalem to pick his team of gunmen. One of them, Meshulam
Makover, recalled later: "Zettler came to my room at Camp
Dror, and within a casual conversation asked: 'What is your
opinion regarding the liquidation of Bernadotte?' I did not
hide my enthusiasm. Two or three days later Zettler came
back and said: 'We have decided to do it. You will be on the
operations team'." Zettler also recruited Yehoshua Cohen,
the man who would eventually pull the trigger.
Bernadotte arrived in Jerusalem on September 17, accompanied
by General Aage Lundstrom, who later wrote: "We drove
rapidly through the Jewish lines without incident... In the
Katamon Quarter we were held up by a Jewish army-type Jeep,
placed in a roadblock and filled with men in Jewish army
uniforms. At the same time I saw a man [Yehoshua Cohen]
running from the Jeep... he put a tommy gun through the open
window on my side of the car and fired point blank at Count
Bernadotte [who] fell forward... There was a considerable
amount of blood on his clothes ."
Zettler never regretted his part in the murder: "When we
demonstrated in front of [Bernadotte] and told him 'Go away
from our Jerusalem, go back to Stockholm', he did not
respond. So we had no choice."
Yehoshua Zettler was born on July 15 1917 at Kfar Saba, a
settlement north of Tel Aviv in what was then Palestine.
When he was four, riots broke out between Jews and Arabs,
and the Zettlers' home was destroyed and had to be rebuilt.
Yehoshua was educated at the Geulla high school in Tel Aviv,
and aged 14 joined Haganah, the largest underground
organisation in Palestine, then under the British Mandate.
In 1933 he joined Haganah B, which in 1937 became Irgun.
As one of Irgun's leading commanders, Zettler took part in
the attack on Bir Adas, the first organised Jewish assault
on an Arab village in Palestine.
In June 1940 Irgun split over policy differences, Zettler
joining the breakaway group. This was Lehi, or the Stern
Gang, which was to pursue ruthless acts of terrorism against
the British throughout the Second World War.
The Stern Gang's immediate need in 1940 was money, and in
September Zettler led an operation in which money was stolen
from a bank in Tel Aviv. In May the next year he was
arrested by British police investigating the robbery, but
escaped from custody .
He was now appointed the Stern Gang's chief of operations in
Palestine. He remained on the run, and was often reduced to
sleeping on park benches. When winter arrived he returned to
his flat in Tel Aviv, where, on December 2, he was arrested
by the British. He was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment
for his role in the bank robbery.
At the central jail in Jerusalem, Zettler became involved in
a riot, and was transferred to Acre Fortress, a
maximum-security prison. There he immediately began to plan
his escape, and on May 4 1947 he was one of the leaders as
41 men - all members of Irgun and Lehi - got away after the
prison doors had been destroyed by explosives.
After the partition of Palestine in 1947 the activities of
Lehi were concentrated on Jerusalem. In April 1948 Zettler
took part in the attack on Deir Yassin, a tiny village on a
hill controlling the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road and the western
suburbs of Jerusalem; 110 villagers were killed. Following
the assassination of Bernadotte, Lehi in Jerusalem was
disbanded.
Zettler, who nickname was Falach ("Peasant" in Arabic)
remained suspicious of Arabs and foreigners and politically
right-wing, believing that Israel should retain all the
occupied territories. In his later years he lived in Tel
Aviv, and owned a petrol station in Jaffa.
His marriage to Bella Shechter, a fellow member of Lehi, was
conducted on a rooftop in Jerusalem in 1948 in the presence
of armed guards. They had two daughters.
Published May 21 2009