Death in Jerusalem

On the evening of September 17, 1948, a car carrying Count Folke Bernadotte, the first United Nations–appointed mediator in the Middle East, traveled up a narrow Jerusalem street. As the car shifted gears for the climb toward the New City, an Israeli Army jeep nosed into the road, forcing Bernadotte’s car and the two following him to come to a full stop. From the jeep sprang three uniformed men clutching automatic weapons. In a moment that set the stage for a legacy of violence that has since characterized Arab-Israeli negotiations, Count Bernadotte was shot six times and killed. The assassins were never brought to justice. A Death in Jerusalem reveals the forces behind this assassination, the passion that first dictated the tactics of terrorism in Israel and that continue to shape the thinking and actions of those even now determined to block accommodation with the Palestinians. At its birth in 1948, the State of Israel was