A Death in Jerusalem
The Assassination by Jewish Extremists of the First Arab/Israeli
کتاب های مرتبط
- اطلاعات
- نقد و بررسی
- دیدگاه کاربران
نقد و بررسی
October 31, 1994
In September 1948, Swedish humanitarian activist Count Folke Bernadotte, a United Nations-appointed mediator attempting to facilitate peace between Israelis and Arabs, was assassinated by members of Lehi (better known as the Stern Gang), a militant Zionist underground group. Stern Gang commander Yitzhak Shamir, the future Israeli prime minister, dispatched the death squad. Alarmed by Bernadotte's plan to designate Jerusalem an international city, Lehi extremists wanted an Israel of biblical proportions on both sides of the Jordan River; they viewed more moderate politicians like David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir as traitors to the Zionist cause. Marton (Wallenberg) has written a dramatic, vivid account of Bernadotte's assassination, a compelling cautionary tale for those working to break the cycle of retribution and terror in the Middle East. Drawing on interviews with Shamir's former comrades, she details his key role in the conspiracy and in other assassinations. The conspirators went unpunished; trigger man Yehoshua Cohen became a kibbutznik; another conspirator, Israel Eldad, is today a supranationalist demagogue. Photos.
November 1, 1994
Marton, a former NPR and ABC correspondent, focuses here, as in two previous books, on dramatic true stories of international intrigue set in the turmoil of World War II and the early stages of the cold war. In "Wallenberg" (1982), she explored Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg's rescue of 30,000 Hungarian Jews from the Third Reich; in "The Polk Conspiracy" (1990), she centered on the murder of American journalist George Polk in postwar Greece. Marton's subject this time is the 1948 assassination of Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, then recently appointed United Nations mediator, by Lehi ("Stern Gang") terrorists under orders from future Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir. Drawing on interviews with Bernadotte's family and aging Lehi veterans and on primary and secondary research, Marton offers minibiographies of Bernadotte and Shamir, vividly capturing the personal and historical trajectories that collided in this violent confrontation between the well-meaning and pragmatic, but politically and philosophically unsophisticated Swedish nobleman and the dour, zealous freedom fighter obsessed with a dream of Israel restored to its biblical proportions. "A Death in Jerusalem" tells a fascinating story whose insights remain relevant today. ((Reviewed November 1, 1994))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1994, American Library Association.)
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