European-American Evangelistic Crusades, Inc.

December 2003 Newsletter

TRAIL OF BLOOD AND MURDER - Part III

John S. Torell

So far we have followed the trail of blood and murder of prominent Swedes from the murder of Sweden’s Foreign Minister, Anna Lindh, who died September 12, 2003. We then moved back in time and took a look at the murder of the Swedish business tycoon, Ivar Kreuger, who was murdered in Paris, France March 12, 1932. Then we looked at the murder of the Swedish diplomat, Raul Wallenberg, who was murdered in a Soviet prison sometime around the 1970's. In the November 2003 newsletter, the murder of the Swedish United Nations’ mediator, Folke Bernadotte, on September 17, 1948 in Jerusalem was examined. The next murder victim on the trail of blood and murder leads us to the Swedish diplomat, DAG HAMMARSKJOLD.

Since this murder took place 42 years ago, it is important that the reader be given a fairly complete background on the man, his family roots, education and accomplishments before he was killed. Much of the information released in this newsletter was not known to the general public when these events took place.

Dag Hammarskjold

THE LIFE OF DAG HAMMARSKJOLD
He was born in the city of Jonkoping, Sweden on July 29, 1905. (I lived in this city from 1954-1963) His father, Hjalmar (1862-1953) was a well known Swedish intellectual leader, beginning his career as a professor of law at the University of Uppsala, then holding a number of positions as a career officer in the Swedish government, then holding the office as Chief Justice in Gota Appellate Court (hovratt), then served as a Swedish diplomat to Denmark for one year. After this he was appointed governor over Uppland. In 1901 he became a minister in the Swedish government, and held a number of different posts. During the war years of 1914-1917 he was the Swedish Prime Minister. From 1923 to 1938 he was the speaker of the Swedish first chamber of congress (Riksdagen). From 1929-47 he was the chairman of the Nobel Prize Foundation.

Hjalmar Hammarskjold was a genuine Swedish civil servant, with high morals and an impeccable record working in public service. Sweden at this time (this no longer holds true for Sweden) had the highest number of civil servants who would not take bribes or live an immoral life. Hard work, honesty and being courteous was the norm that the Swedish schools stressed at this time, and the Bible was part of the curriculum in all public schools. Every morning classes opened with teachers leading the students in prayer to God, in the name of Jesus Christ. When a student did not behave according to the set standard, the teacher would publicly punish the student with stripes from a rod. This was the heritage and the upbringing of the young boy, Dag.

Once Dag had finished high school, he studied at the University of Uppsala, majoring in law and economics. His studies in English, French and German made it possible for him to write and speak well in these languages. Dag was not a weak young man; he competed in gymnastics, he was a strong skier and a mountaineer who served for some years as the president of the Swedish Alpinist Club. He took a second degree in economics in 1928, a law degree in 1930 and a doctoral degree in economics in 1934 During 1933 he was teaching political economics at the University of Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. After this he joined the Swedish civil service as a permanent undersecretary in the Ministry of Finance and subsequently became president of the board of the Bank of Sweden (Riksbanken). From 1947 he served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1951 Dag was appointed vice chairman of Sweden’s delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. In 1952 he became the chairman of the Swedish delegation.

On April 10, 1953, five months after the resignation of Trygve Lie of Norway as Secretary-General of the United Nations, Hammarskjold was elected to that office for a term of five years. In September 1957 he was re-elected for another five years.

When Dag took over the United Nations, the Korean war was still going on, and tense negotiations were taking place to end the war which officially was run by the United Nations but in reality was directed by the United States which had the largest force on the battlefield. On July 27, 1953 a cease fire was agreed upon, Korea was divided at the 38^th parallel and this stalemate continues up to this very day, with no peace accord signed 50 years ago.

His first international victory came during the years 1954-55, when he personally negotiated the release of American POW’s captured by Communist China during the war in Korea. (In order to educate the people born after 1960, there were 1.3 million South Koreans killed including civilians, 1 million Chinese soldiers, 500,000 North Korean soldiers and 37,000 American soldiers).

Ben Gurion

THE ISRAELI CONNECTION
In 1955 the political state of Israel was seven years old. Just like in 1948, the Zionist government in Israel under the leadership of Prime Minister David Ben Gurion; Moshe Dayan, chief of staff; Golda Meir, foreign minister and Menachem Begin, leader of the opposition party in Israel was not looking for peace, but for war. Only war would make it possible for Israel to enlarge its boarders and take more land. Seven years earlier, Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat and United Nation’s negotiator tried to bring peace to the region, and he was promptly murdered by the Israelis. Now another Swedish civil servant, Dag Hammarskjold, became involved to bring peace to the region. But this Swede had more power and authority because he was the head of the United Nations.

During the early parts of 1955, Israeli and Egyptian military forces had been involved in skirmishes in the border area between Israel and the Gaza strip. For some time, after a cease fire had been negotiated, the United Nations had stationed UN troops in this area. But on February 28, 1955, Ben Gurion ordered an attack on an Egyptian military installation in the Gaza strip, then under the control of Egypt. Fifty Israeli paratroopers were sent in during the night, utterly destroying the camp and killing some 41 Egyptian soldiers and officers.

UN officers reported the attack to the UN headquarters back in New York and it was taken up in the Security Council where a resolution was adopted strongly condemning the Israeli raid. Israel’s strongest supporters at this time all voted against Israel: France, England and the United States.

Gamal Nasser

Egypt’s leader was the young Lt. Colonel, Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970), who had led a military coup and taken over Egypt in 1952. From 1954-56 he held the title Prime Minister of Egypt, and after that proclaimed himself to become the President of Egypt.

Ben Gurion and his government were unrepentant. From 1949 through 1953 Israel had taken in 686,748 new immigrants, and the Zionist government knew it had to get more land at any cost.

The commando raid on the Egyptian army post was led by a young Israeli officer from the Israeli paratrooper unit, Ariel "Arik" Sharon (current Prime Minister of Israel 2003). Sharon and his "shook unit" had attacked a Jordanian village Qibya on October 14, 1953 killing 65 villagers, wounding 75 others and blowing up 45 houses. Sharon and his soldiers wore no marking on their uniforms and used weapons different than what the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) used, so that Ben Gurion could blame these massacres on "fanatical Jewish settlers" out of control. UN observers investigated this massacre as well and others, and the United Nations severely condemned these atrocities. Ben Gurion went on Israeli national radio and flatly told the people in Israel and the world that no Israeli military forces were involved in these raids. Israeli leaders and regular people were shocked and outraged, but it did not have any effect on Ben Gurion. Ben Gurion’s policies caused a huge split in the Israeli government. The political pressure on Nasser forced him to counterattack, and he issued a decree that Palestinian volunteers from the Gaza strip be organized into commando units "fedayeen" (self-sacrifice units), and that these would be sent into Israel for sabotage and terrorist acts against the civilian population. The Egyptian army was to train and equip these commando units. The suicide bombers which are today plaguing Israel were born to become a scourge which has lasted for some 43 years.

There was a young man, 27 years old, serving in the Egyptian Army at this time, and his name was Yasser Arafat. He founded "The Fatah" group, which is the military wing of the PLO and as we can see today, he has inflicted heavy damages to the people of Israel.

Sinai Map

THE SUEZ CANAL WAR 1956
The Suez canal completed in 1869 was in 1956 the most important channel for shipping and moving warships from Europe to the Indian Ocean. The oil imported by the European countries came through the canal. Since 1882, the canal had been under the military protection of England and the zone around the canal was a huge British military base and in 1956 was defended by 80,000 British soldiers. The British government employed 200,000 Egyptians to work in the canal zone. The canal was a financial bonanza, but very little went to the Egyptian government. Since its revolution in 1952, Egypt, with the overthrow of the Egyptian royal family, the Egyptian population became more and more hostile to the British occupation of the Suez canal. Calls for Egypt to drive out the British and nationalize the canal became louder and louder.

Negotiations between the British government and the Egyptian government to turn the canal over to Egyptian control started on April 17, 1953. The Israeli government became very nervous, the British soldiers served as a buffer zone between them and Egypt.

Moshe Sharett

The Israeli Army Intelligence Service (AMAN) under the leadership of Gibli was given the assignment by defense minister Pinhas Lavon to sabotage the negotiation process by sending in a secret Israeli undercover group to Egypt, to begin attacks against British businesses and institutions in order to convince the British Government that Egypt was too unstable to be given back the canal. Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett (a Jew born in 1894 in the Ukraine, was prime minister from 1953 to 1955 and died in 1965) and his government were kept in the dark about this subversive act. To lead this "terrorist cell" Gibli chose a former Israeli army officer, 27 year old Austrian born Jew, Abraham Seidenwerg, also known as "Avri Elad."

He was already stationed in Cairo (capital of Egypt) as an Israeli undercover agent, posing as a former Nazi officer and working for a German electrical company. His job for Israel was to identify and ferret out former Nazis hiding in Egypt. Under his command he had four other Israeli agents. ¹

On July 9, 1954, The Voice of Israel Radio had a program called "For the Housewife." On this day, a recipe for English cake was broadcast, which was the secret signal to Seidenwerg to activate his unit and start fire bombings in Cairo. His targets were to be British and American installations. Five days later the Israeli Unit 131 fire bombed the U.S. cultural and information centers in Cairo and Alexandria. On July 23, Cairo’s main railroad station was firebombed and two British-owned movie theaters in Alexandria were targeted. An Israeli agent, Philippe Nathanson, was caught by the Egyptian police when the phosphorus bomb hidden in a spectacle case ignited prematurely. Nathanson was injured and taken to a hospital and then arrested. When Egyptian security forces broke into his apartment, they discovered material that made it possible for them to find and arrest the other three Israeli agents. However, Seidenwerg was able to slip away and get out of Egypt. News of the arrest of the Israeli agents who had been posing as radical Egyptian fanatical militants, caused a firestorm in the international press. It also made it very hard for Prime Minister Sharett to explain to the United Nations, who at this time had observers on the border between Israel and Egypt, that he had no knowledge of this sabotage operation, but that the Israeli military had taken the situation into their own hands. ²

The canal was vital to the economy of Israel, and the possibility that it could be closed to Israeli shipping caused great concern for the Israeli government.

In September, the Israeli government decided to test the Egyptians so they sent in an Israeli cargo vessel named Bat Galim flying the Israeli flag. Before the ship could enter the canal, Egyptian forces boarded the ship, and arrested the crew and charged them with having murdered two Egyptian fishermen on their way to the canal. Three months later the crew was released, but the Egyptians kept the ship and its cargo.

On October 19, 1954, an agreement was signed between England and Egypt, that the canal was going to be handed over to Egypt and that all British troops were to be withdrawn in a period of 20 months. This meant that the canal was going to be permanently closed to Israeli shipping.

In Israel the government went into a crisis. To a degree, Sharett had been able to publicly lie and deceive the people of Israel and the international press, but the infighting in political circles made it impossible for Sharett to govern. On February 1, 1955, Sharett contacted Ben Gurion and asked him for help. Gurion demanded the resignation of Lavon, which came on February 17. Sharett then asked Gurion to come out of his retirement and take over the post as defense minister, which he did. Instead of toning down its military attacks on Egypt, Gurion ordered more and simply stated that "Egypt needed to be taught a lesson." The road to war was getting shorter.

THE SOVIETS ARE COMING
To fight a war takes three ingredients: money, weapons and soldiers. Nasser had the soldiers, but was lacking the other two. The Gaza raid by Israel had shown that the Egyptians were no match for the Israelis. At this time the Israeli government was so bold that it had its Air Force fighters flying daily over Cairo, buzzing the city, and there was nothing that the Egyptian forces could do about it. When Nasser turned to the United States, he was turned down. With the heavy Jewish lobby in Washington D.C., the American government would sell nothing to Nasser. Israeli army patrols drove right up to the buffer zone, with UN troops inside, and taunted the Egyptian soldiers and shouted curses at them in Arabic. When the Canadian General and U.N. commander E.L.M. Burns complained about it, the Israelis refused to stop. The tension was building.

E.L.M Burns

Britain and France were not going to sell weapons to Egypt, instead the British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, dealt a blow to Nasser by establishing a military pact aimed at preventing the Soviets from coming into the Middle East. Known as the "Baghdad Pact," it linked England, Turkey and Iraq and was signed on February 24, 1955. It made Nasser furious; he was determined to align Egypt with the Soviet Union and in return receive military weapons.

On April 9, 1955, Nasser and his entourage chartered an Air India plane for a flight to Bandung, Indonesia. He was going to attend the initial Afro-Asian Conference of nonaligned nations (third world countries). Knowing the infiltration of Israeli intelligence agents, and having been in contact with the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) liaison undercover agent for Egyptian affairs, Miles Copeland, Nasser did not trust using western airlines. Assassinations had taken place before when an airliner had been sabotaged to kill an important world leader. On his way to the conference, he stopped in New Delhi (capital of India) for a private talk with Prime Minister Nehru. From here they flew together to Rangoon (capital of Burma), where a meeting was arranged with Burma’s Prime Minister U Nu and Chou En-lai, a high party leader in the Communist Party of China. At this time China did not have the capacity to produce and sell weapons, after having taken heavy losses in the Korean war, but Chou promised to contact the Soviet Communists and encourage them to sell weapons to Egypt.

On May 18, 1955, Nasser met with the Soviet ambassador, Daniel Solod, and was told that an arms deal was going to be worked out. Meetings were held in Cairo and later in Prague (then capital of Czechoslovakia), where two Soviet generals were part of the discussions.

On September 27, 1955, Nasser announced publicly that Egypt had completed an arms deal with Czechoslovakia. The Soviets, for tactical reasons, decided not to sell weapons directly to Egypt, but since Czechoslovakia was occupied and controlled by the Soviet Union, it was in reality a military deal with the Soviets. Behind the scenes, the United States and England had tried hard to stop Nasser from aligning himself with the Communists in Russia, but at the same time refusing to sell weapons to Egypt.

While saying no to Egypt, the U.S. had secretly sold to Israel 97 military aircraft, hundreds of Sherman tanks, armored cars and artillery pieces. Israel had also been able to secretly purchase weapons from France.

During this time, Nasser had ordered the Palestinian Fedayeen to attack targets inside Israel, and on September 1, 1955, Israel struck back when its Unit 101 penetrated three miles inside Egyptian territory along the Gaza strip and attacked an Egyptian police station at Khan Yunis. Then as a diversion tactic, also attacked the small Arab village of Abasan. Thirty six Egyptians were killed and 13 wounded, most of them police and military personnel. The UN forces in the area were unable to stop the fighting between the Israelis and the Egyptians.

On September 11, Egypt retaliated for the raid by Israel, by declaring a sea blockade against Israel, blocking the Straits of Tiran at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba. This move blocked any shipping to and from the Israeli port of Elath. But Nasser had one problem, it would take two years for the weapons from the Communists to arrive and have the Egyptian Army trained to use them.

Moshe Dayan

Egypt and Syria, on October 20, 1955, joined in a military pact with a common military command. On October 23, Defense Minister Ben Gurion called in his top military leader, Moshe Dayan, and told him to prepare the Israeli army to capture the Straits of Tiran, and prepare contingency plans to occupy the Gaza strip and push for an offensive into the Sinai desert. As Defense Minister, Ben Gurion had decided that the time had come for war with Egypt and that Israel would strike first.

Both sides now began to make raids into each other’s territory, killing and taking prisoners. On October 28, 1955, Israeli attackers retaliated for an Egyptian raid on Bir Ain, by hitting an Egyptian army camp in the southern Negev at Kuntilla, killing five Egyptian soldiers and capturing 30. Tension was rising in the area. Just hours after Ben Gurion presented his coalition government and took over the post as Prime Minister from Sharett on November 2, a large Israeli army force attacked and smashed new Egyptian armed positions just across the Egyptian side of the demilitarized zone at El Shabha. Fifty Egyptian soldiers were killed and 40 taken prisoners. The Israeli soldiers then took over command, and restricted the U.N. personnel from moving around. In reality, they were being held prisoners.

U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold sent a protest note to Israel the day after the attack, calling the Israeli action unwarranted and a breach of an Israeli pledge "to abstain from actions that might aggravate the situation. The possibilities of achieving stability in the area are considerably reduced by such military action as that of yesterday." Ben Gurion refused to budge, and when the local U.N. General Burns called on Ben Gurion six days later, the Israeli Prime minister rejected the UN protest. Israel now controlled this former 145 square kilometer demilitarized zone along the El Auja routes, which was a must if Israel was to strike at Egypt itself.

Before the zone had been demilitarized and taken over by the United Nations, Israel had in 1950 expelled 7,000 Bedouins from part of it, and in September 1953 its armed forces invaded the zone, killed the remaining Bedouins and their livestock and established a kibbutz (an armed farming commune) called Ketsiot. When Egypt protested, Israel answered that this was a civilian commune and should be allowed into the area according to former agreements signed under the auspices of the U.N. In reality there were no civilians on the kibbutz, but armed Israeli soldiers dressed as civilians.

Dag Hammarskjold had now come into the same position as Folke Bernadotte seven years earlier. Israel did not want peace, it wanted war to gain more land, and the U.N. Secretary General stood in its way. When pressure from England and the United States was put on Israel, Ben Gurion responded that no land was to be given up, regardless of what the U.N. or other nations said. The policy laid out by Ben Gurion and his supporters stated that peace was important, but more land was needed, since a larger land mass was the only security for Israel. That this land was to be taken from another nation, made no difference to Ben Gurion, the entire Palestine that Israel now occupied had been taken by force from the people who had lived there for the last 2,000 years.

Gurion, Dayan & Peres

Ben Gurion, shortly after the latest Israeli raid, requested permission from his Cabinet to attack and take over the Straits Tiran. The Cabinet voted "No." Ben Gurion then decided to attack in the north without consulting his Cabinet. On December 11, Israeli troops struck Syrian military outposts and civilian homes at Buteiha Farm and Koursi, on the slopes of Mount Hermon, north of the Sea of Galilee, killing 56 Arabs, wounding 9 others and taking 32 prisoners. Once the raid was over, the Israeli soldiers withdrew. United Nations’ General Burns reported back to the Security Council that the Syrians had not provoked Israel and that this military action carried out by several companies of troops was too large to have been planned on a day’s notice.

The raid against the Syrians caused the United Nations Security Council to condemn Israel in a resolution supported by the United States. It caused Syria to turn to the Soviet Union for support, including weapons.

On December 13, 1955 General Burns wrote to Dag Hammarskjold the following: "I am very uneasy in regard to the possible intention of the Government of Israel to take military action against Egypt." Four days later he wrote: "Tiberias (Sea of Galilee) incident has hardened Egypt’s attitude and any change of position unlikely." Three days later he wrote: "There is a striking disparity between the scale of retaliation (in the Syrian raid) and the provocation which was cited by the Israeli government."

During the month of January, 1956, Hammarskjold flew into Jerusalem and was meeting with Prime Minister Ben Gurion and foreign minister Moshe Sharett. They had promised the Secretary-General of the United Nations that Israeli troops would be removed from the El Auja zone.

When Hammarskjold returned to New York in February, he found out that Israel was stalling on this promise. In a sharp reply to Sharett on February 28, Hammarskjold wrote: "On my return . . . I learned to my disappointment and great concern that for several weeks you delayed and now raise difficulties in implementing the agreement on El Auja. I fail to see that anything has happened which invalidates your unconditional acceptance of the proposals of 3 November, again confirmed when I was in Jerusalem. It is certainly needless for me to recapitulate the proposals ‘in principle,’ severe criticism was directed by you against Egypt for its delay in agreeing to the suggested arrangements."

Just like Bernadotte, Hammarskjold had now collided head on with the Zionist leaders of Israel and ultimately this would lead to his death. The world situation in 1956 was very unstable. President Eisenhower had suffered a heart attack on September 23, 1955, but recovered. He was in the process of running for a second term in the White House, which meant that most of his energies were spent in raising money for his election campaign and campaigning.

John Foster Dulles

Allen W. Dulles

Eisenhower was in a weakened condition so he had the two Dulles brothers running the affairs of the United States. John Foster Dulles (1888-1959) who was Secretary of State from 1953 to 1959 and Allen W. Dulles (1893-1969) was director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961. Eisenhower and the people in the world did not know that the Dulles brothers worked hard to foment attacks on the Communists in Poland and Hungary, using CIA agents and money, and when the uprising took place in the latter part of 1956, all the supports promised the freedom fighters were withheld, and thousands upon thousands died under the tracks of Soviet tanks or were shot in the back of their heads.

Neither did Eisenhower know that the British and French governments had worked out a secret deal with Israel, where the three nations would jointly attack Egypt, to give Israel all Egyptian land east of the Suez canal and return the Suez canal to foreign control, under British and French rule. This war broke out on October 29, 1956.

Since Dag Hammarskjold was an independent man, not bending to the Western powers, nor to the Communists, nor to Israel, but instead trying to build a strong United Nations which would be independent from all national politics, he not only become the enemy of Israel, but of all world leaders. In next month’s newsletter, I will present the truth of the events, which led up to the murder of Hammarskjold in 1961.

The current events in the Middle East are just a continuous saga of the ruthless politics pursued by Arabs, Jews, Communists and the Western Powers.

1. Seidenwerg had held the rank of major in the Israeli Army, but had been court marshaled for stealing Arab property, found guilty, stripped of his rank and discharged. He had been divorced in 1952 and was out of work when he was hired to work for the Israeli Army Intelligence Service. The Israeli sabotage unit was known as ‘Unit 131, and after a year’s training Seidenwerg was sent to Cairo, using the false name of "Paul Frank."

2. The method of broadcasting hidden messages for intelligence agents has been used for years by the Soviets, the British, American, Japanese, etc.