Count Folke Bernadotte: the mediator killed for demanding the refugees’ return On 17 September 1948, the Zionist group Lehi assassinated Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN Mediator for Palestine, in Jerusalem. The day before his death, he submitted his report to the UN calling for the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes, and criticised the Israeli government for showing “nothing but hardness and obduracy” towards them. Ironically, in 1945 he had rescued thousands of prisoners, many of them Jews, from Nazi camps. No one was ever tried for his murder, and Yitzhak Shamir, one of the Lehi leaders said to have ordered it, later became Prime Minister of Israel. His call for the refugees’ return became UN Resolution 194, still unimplemented today. This was not a failure of justice. It is a structure designed for impunity. #Palestine #RightOfReturn #Nakba #Impunity