Yehoshua Zettler | Jewish militant, 91
Yehoshua Zettler, one of the founding members of a violent pre-state Jewish movement and mastermind of the assassination of a top U.N. envoy in 1948, has died in Israel. He was 91.
Yehoshua Zettler, one of the founding members of a violent pre-state Jewish movement and mastermind of the assassination of a top U.N. envoy in 1948, has died in Israel. He was 91.
His wife, Bella, another member of the LEHI movement, also known as the Stern Gang, said Mr. Zettler suffered a stroke and died on Wednesday.
Mr. Zettler was one of the original members of the militant Irgun group and its more extreme breakaway LEHI faction, serving under two future Israeli prime ministers - Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir.
He was best known for planning the assassination of U.N. mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in Jerusalem in September 1948.
Bernadotte angered LEHI members by suggesting that the boundaries of a 1947 U.N. partition plan be revised to put Jerusalem under U.N. control and hand Israel's Negev desert to Jordan.
As head of the Swedish Red Cross during World War II, Bernadotte had negotiated with Nazi Heinrich Himmler to save thousands of Jews from concentration camps.
LEHI commanders considered Bernadotte to be a British agent who cooperated with the Nazis. They picked Mr. Zettler to have him killed. A LEHI team blocked the envoy's limousine, and a gunman killed Bernadotte and a French officer in the car.
"This country owes him a great debt that Jerusalem is today in our hands," said ultranationalist lawmaker Arieh Eldad, whose father, Yisrael, was one of LEHI's leaders.
- AP