Y. Cohen; Tied to 1948 Israel Assassination

Yehoshua Cohen, linked by historians to the 1948 assassination of United Nations mediator Count Folke Bernadotte, has died at the age of 64, the Israeli news agency Itim said.

Cohen, a member of the Israeli underground movement before Israel became a nation, died Friday at his home in the Negev Desert kibbutz (collective settlement) of Sde Boker after a heart attack, the agency said this week.

A leading member of the Stern Gang guerrilla group, Cohen never publicly confirmed or denied allegations that he was involved in the ambush of the Swedish statesman in his car on a Jerusalem street on Sept. 17, 1948.

Israeli historian Michael Bar Zohar, a biographer of David Ben-Gurion, said Israel’s first premier had told him that Cohen had admitted his role in the killing. Ben Gurion and Cohen lived on Sde Boker.

Bernadotte, a nephew of Sweden’s King Gustav V, was appointed mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict immediately after Israel’s independence in May, 1948.

Bernadotte on his own decided to make Jerusalem and the Negev Desert part of Transjordan and the Western Galilee part of Israel, a sharp change from then-standing U.N. resolutions.

His ideas caused an uproar in Israel, particularly among members of the hard-line Irgun and Stern Gang movements.

Shortly after Bernadotte announced his plan, he and an accompanying French colonel were shot dead by three men with submachine guns.

Ben-Gurion instantly banned such underground groups as the Stern Gang, but the killers were never officially identified.

Bernadotte’s death dealt a severe blow to the Israeli right and it was 29 years before ex-Irgun head Menachem Begin’s Likud movement won a general election in 1977.

Cohen later became head of security at kibbutz Sde Boker and most Israelis remember him from photos showing his towering figure alongside the diminutive Ben-Gurion during long walks in the desert.