Tucker's Confessions and the Implications of the Assassination of Bernadotte
Count Folke Bernadot (1895–1948) was a Swedish diplomat and nobleman from the royal House of Bernadotte. He became renowned for his role in two prominent humanitarian and diplomatic missions. In the final stages of World War II, serving as deputy chairman of the Swedish Red Cross, he negotiated with Nazi officials to secure the release of thousands of prisoners from concentration camps, including Scandinavians and others, thereby saving more than 20,000 lives. In the summer of 1948, he was appointed United Nations Mediator in Palestine. His most significant contributions included negotiating a temporary truce in 1948 and proposing a peace plan that adjusted the proposed partition borders, placed Jerusalem under international control, annexed the Negev region to the Arabs, and granted Palestinian refugees the right of return or compensation. His proposals faced strong objections from various parties for differing reasons, leading to his assassination on September 17, 1948, by the Jewish Stern Gang, alongside the UN French observer, André Séroux. The Stern Gang viewed his proposals as a threat to Israeli interests. This assassination became one of the most prominent political killings linked to the early stages of the Arab-Israeli conflict, sparking widespread international condemnation. Subsequently, Yitzhak Shamir, a member of the Stern Gang, served twice as Prime Minister of Israel. In his report to the United Nations, issued just one day before his assassination, Bernadot affirmed that Arab refugees had the right to return to their homes within territories under Jewish control as soon as possible, under UN supervision, with resettlement and compensation provided for those who chose not to return. He stated that no just and comprehensive settlement would be possible without recognizing the Palestinian right of return, noting that most of these refugees had come from areas designated for the Jewish state under the partition plan. He emphasized that the Palestinian displacement resulted from panic caused by fighting and terrorism, as well as direct expulsion, refuting Israeli claims that they had left their homes voluntarily. Bernadot also employed unusually direct moral language in diplomatic reports, arguing that denying war victims the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigration to Palestine continued constituted a violation of fundamental principles of justice, effectively threatening the permanent displacement of a population rooted in the land for generations. The assassination of Bernadot and other mediators serves as irrefutable evidence of the malicious and expansionist intentions of Zionists, and exposes the fallacy and absurdity of claims by some that Israel desires peace.
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In a striking admission to the famous journalist Tucker Carlson, it was mentioned that he informed President Trump, during a meeting at the White House approximately two weeks before the outbreak of war with Iran, that the true objectives of the conflict were: 1) To weaken Iran to the extent that Israeli dominance over the region could be consolidated; 2) To diminish the power and influence of the Gulf Arab states; and 3) To compel US forces to withdraw from the region, as their presence was seen as an obstacle to Israel imposing its regional hegemony. The President reportedly agreed with this assessment entirely. Regardless of the source of these expectations, time has proven them accurate. The situation in the Gulf has changed; Iran is broken and will not recover for years, and the prospect of US bases returning to the region is highly uncertain.
Ahmed Al-Sarraf
