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Lehi (IPA: ['lɛxi], Hebrew acronym for Lohamei Herut Israel, "Fighters for the Freedom of Israel", לח"י - לוחמי חירות ישראל) was an armed underground Zionist faction in the Palestine Mandate that had as its goal the eviction of the British from Palestine to allow unrestricted immigration of Jews and the formation of a Jewish state. Although the name of the group only became "Lehi" after founder, Avraham Stern's death, this article follows the common practice of calling it that throughout its history.

Lehi was described as a terrorist organisation by the British authorities, the mainstream Yishuv, and by the United Nations mediator Ralph Bunche. The group was known as the Stern Gang (after its first commander, Avraham Stern), a denunciatory label originated by the British that remains in common use.

Foundations and founding

Avraham ("Yair") Stern was originally an adherent of the Revisionist Zionist movement founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky in the early 1920s and a member of Irgun, but separated from these groups in 1940 to form his own group, which he called Irgun Zvai Leumi be-Yisrael (National Military Organization in Israel).

Specifically, Stern believed that the Jewish population should focus its efforts on fighting the British rather than supporting them in World War II; and that forceful methods were an effective means to achieve those goals. His strongest objection was to the White Paper of 1939 which effectively set its goal to end Jewish immigration and land purchasing in Eretz Israel. He believed that the "gates" of the country should be opened to the Jewish refugees fleeing from Europe, and that this was the utmost importance at the time. It was over this issue where Yair and his long-time friend David Raziel split. Raziel believed that the Irgun should assist Britain in their fight against Germany. Raziel was killed in Iraq during a mission for the British forces. Yair believed that dying for the "foreign occupier" who is obstructing the creation of the Jewish State is useless. He differentiated between "enemies of the Jewish people" (e.g., the British) and "Jew haters", (e.g. the Nazis), believing that the former needed to be defeated, and the latter neutralized. To this end, he initiated contact with Nazi authorities, a decision which also proved useless in retrospect.

Goals and methods

Lehi had three main goals:

• to bring together all those interested in liberation (that is, those willing to join in active fighting against the British)
• to appear before the world as the only active Jewish military organization
• to take over the Land of Israel by armed force

The group believed in its early years that its goals would be achieved by finding a strong international ally that would expel the British from Palestine in return for help from the Jewish military; this would in turn require the creation of a broad and organised military force "demonstrating its desire for freedom through military operations."

Principles of Rebirth

Avraham Stern crystallized the ideology of his organization in what was called the "18 Principles of Rebirth":

1. THE NATION The Jewish people is a covenanted people, the originator of monotheism, formulator of the prophetic teachings, standard bearer of human culture, guardian of glorious patrimony. The Jewish people is schooled in self-sacrifice and suffering; its vision, survivability and faith in redemption are indestructible.

2. THE HOMELAND The homeland in the Land of Israel within the borders delineated in the Bible ("To your descendants, I shall give this land, from the River of Egypt to the great Euphrates River." Genesis 15:18) This is the land of the living, where the entire nation shall live in safety.

3. THE NATION AND ITS LAND Israel conquered the land with the sword. There it became a great nation and only there it will be reborn. Hence Israel alone has a right to that land. This is an absolute right. It has never expired and never will.

4. THE GOALS 1. Redemption of the land. 2. Establishment of sovereignty. 3. Revival of the nation. There is no sovereignty without the redemption of the land, and there is no national revival without sovereignty.

These are the goals of the organization during the period of war and conquest:

5. EDUCATION Educate the nation to love freedom and zealously guard Israel's eternal patrimony. Inculcate the idea that the nation is master to its own fate. Revive the doctrine that "The sword and the book came bound together from heaven" (Midrash Vayikra Rabba 35:8)

6. UNITY The unification of the entire nation around the banner of the Hebrew freedom movement. The use of the genius, status and resources of individuals and the channeling of the energy, devotion and revolutionary fervour of the masses for the war of liberation.

7. PACTS Make pacts with all those who are willing to help the struggle of the organization and provide direct support.

8. FORCE Consolidate and increase the fighting force in the homeland and in the Diaspora, in the underground and in the barracks, to become the Hebrew army of liberation with its flag, arms, and commanders.

9. WAR Constant war against those who stand in the way of fulfilling the goals.

10. CONQUEST The conquest of the homeland from foreign rule and its eternal possession.

These are the tasks of the movement during the period of sovereignty and redemption:

11. SOVEREIGNTY Renewal of Hebrew sovereignty over the redeemed land.

12. RULE OF JUSTICE The establishment of a social order in the spirit of Jewish morality and prophetic justice. Under such an order no one will go hungry or unemployed. All will live in harmony, mutual respect and friendship as an example to the world.

13. REVIVING THE WILDERNESS Build the ruins and revive the wilderness for mass immigration and population increase.

14. ALIENS Solve the problem of alien population by exchange of population .

15. INGATHERING OF THE EXILES Total in-gathering of the exiles to their sovereign state.

16. POWER The Hebrew nation shall become a first-rate military, political, cultural and economical entity in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean Sea.

17. REVIVAL The revival of the Hebrew language as a spoken language by the entire nation, the renewal of the historical and spiritual might of Israel. The purification of the national character in the fire of revival.

18. THE TEMPLE The building of the Third Temple as a symbol of the new era of total redemption.

Evolution and tactics of the organization

The group was initially unsuccessful. Early attempts to raise funds through criminal activities, including a bank robbery in Tel Aviv in 1940 and another robbery on 9 January 1942 in which Jewish passers-by were killed, brought about the temporary collapse of the group, and an attempt to assassinate the head of the British secret police in Lod in which three police personnel were killed, two Jewish and one British, elicited a severe response from the British and Jewish establishments who collaborated in an effort to eliminate the underground organisation.

Stern's group was seen as a major threat by the British authorities, who regarded it as a terrorist organisation and instructed the Defence Security Office (the colonial branch of MI5) to track down its leaders. In 1942, Stern was killed by Inspector Geoffrey Morton of the CID. Several of the group members were arrested, and the group went into eclipse, but was revived after the September 1942 escape of two of its leaders Yitzhak Shamir and Eliyahu Giladi (later killed by the group under circumstances that remain mysterious) aided by two other escapees Natan Yellin-Mor (Friedman) and Yisrael Eldad (Sheib). Shamir (who would later become Prime Minister of Israel), was known by the codename "Michael" which was a reference to one of Shamir's heroes, Michael Collins. Lehi was guided by spiritual and philosophical leaders such as Uri Zvi Greenberg and Israel Eldad. The smallest by far of any of the Jewish armed groups during the mandatory era, it never attracted more than a few hundred followers, and was reviled by most of its contemporaries. After the killing of Giladi, the organization was lead by a triumvirate of Eldad, Shamir, and Yellin-Mor.

Lehi adopted a non-socialist platform of Anti-Imperialist ideology. It viewed the continued British rule of Palestine as a violation of the mandate's provision generally, and its restrictions on Jewish immigration to be an intolerable breach of international law. Lehi's focus, both in rhetoric and in action, was against the British administration in Palestine. However they also targeted Jews whom they regarded as traitors, and towards the end of the British Mandate they joined in operations with the Haganah and Irgun against Arab targets, for example Deir Yassin.

According to a compilation by Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Lehi was responsible for 42 assassinations altogether, more than twice as many as those of the Irgun and Haganah combined during the same period. Of those Lehi assassinations that Ben-Yehuda classified as political, more than half the victims were Jews.

Lehi also rejected the authority of the Jewish Agency and related organizations, operating entirely on its own throughout nearly all of its existence.

Lehi prisoners captured by the British generally refused to present a defence when brought to trial in British courts. They would only read out statements in which they declared that the court, representing an occupying force, had no jurisdiction over them and is illegal. For the same reason, Lehi prisoners refused to plea for amnesty, even when it was clear that this would have them spared from the death penalty. In one case Moshe Barazani, a Lehi man, and Meir Feinstein, an Irgun member, committed suicide in prison in order to deprive the British of the ability to hang them.

Contact with Nazi authorities

In 1940, Lehi proposed intervening in World War II on the side of Nazi Germany. It offered assistance in "evacuating" the Jews of Europe, in return for Germany's help in expelling Britain from Mandate Palestine. Late in 1940, Lehi representative Naftali Lubenchik was sent to Beirut where he met the German official Werner Otto von Hentig. Lubenchik told Von Hentig that Lehi had not yet revealed its full power and that they were capable of organizing a whole range of anti-British operations.

On the assumption that the destruction of Britain was the Germans' top objective, the organization offered cooperation in the following terms: From the NMO side: full cooperation in sabotage, espionage and intelligence and up to wide military operations in the Middle East and in eastern Europe anywhere where the Irgun had Jewish cells, active and trained and in some places with weapons. From the German side, the following declarations and actions were demanded: (1) Full recognition in an independent Jewish state in Palestine/Eretz Israel (2) On the same level of importance and in practice, to allow all the Jews wishing so, or about to leave anyway from their place in Europe, by their own will or because of government injunctions, with no restrictions on their numbers, the ability to migrate to Palestine. For this purpose there was expressed a need to cancel any transfer plans of Jews to distant countries like Madagascar.

On January 11, 1941 a letter was sent from Der Marvitz, the German Naval attaché in Ankara, depicting an offer to "actively take part in the war on Germany's side" in return for German support for "the establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich". There are three possibilities as to how the offer reached the German Naval attaché in Ankara. One is that en route to Germany, von Hentig was delayed in Ankara and delivered his version of the offer orally to Der Marvitz and Marvitz wrote the letter using his words. The second is that Colombani (a French general in the French intelligence) invented the offer because of personal rivaly between himself and other figures in Vichy: this rivalry is known from a paragraph in Der Marvitz's letter, "Colombani is of the opinion that his return to France is a consequence of co-operation of Conti with Minister Pierroton", or, third, that Colombani wanted the offer to fail: he had co-operated with the Jerusalem Mufti in Lebanon in 1938-1939 and was also the one who delivered him in his car in 1939 through Syria to the Iraqi border.

In any case, Der Marvitz delivered the offer, classified as secret, to the German Ambassador in Turkey and on January 21, 1941 it was sent to Berlin. There was never any response to the offer. Von Hentig would later say that he believed it was important to help the Jews establish a country. German plans such as the Madagascar Plan eventually failed and ultimately led the Nazis to initiate the Holocaust, the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" in 1942, but at the time of the Lehi proposal, this was still in the future.

Later history

As a group that never had over a hundred members, Lehi relied on audacious but small-scale operations to bring their message home, as such they adopted the tactics of groups such as the IRA, who had successfully used guerrilla warfare to force the British out of the Southern Republic of Ireland in the 1920s. To this end, Lehi conducted small-scale operations such as assassinations of British soldiers and police officers and Jewish "collaborators". More than half the targets of political assassination were Jewish. Another strategy, (1947) was to send bombs in the mail to many British politicians. Other actions included sabotaging infrastructure targets: bridges, railroads, and oil refineries. Lehi financed their operations from private donations, extortion, and bank robbery.

Lehi was one of groups said to be involved in massacres according to Israeli historian Benny Morris, see List of massacres committed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Assassination of Lord Moyne

On 6 November 1944 Lehi assassinated Lord Moyne in Cairo. Moyne was the highest ranking British government representative in the region. Yitzhak Shamir claimed later that Moyne was assassinated because of his support for a Middle Eastern Arab Federation and anti-Semitic lectures in which Arabs were held to be racially superior to Jews. The assassination act rocked the British government, and outraged Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister. The two assassins, Eliahu Bet-Zouri and Eliahu Hakim were captured and used their trial as a platform to make public their political philosophy.

Cairo-Haifa train bombings

During the lead-up to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war the Cairo-Haifa train was mined several times. On February 29 1948, Lehi mined the train north of Rehovot, killing 28 soldiers and wounding 35. On March 31, the train was mined near Binyamina killing 40 civilians and wounding 60. The second attack was also attributed to Lehi but Lehi never took credit for this event.

Deir Yassin massacre

Lehi took a part in the events referred to as the Deir Yassin massacre. The Deir Yassin massacre refers to the killing of between 100 and 120 villagers, alleged to have been mainly old people, women and children during and after the battle at the village of Deir Yassin (also written as Dayr Yasin or Dir Yassin) near Jerusalem in the British Mandate of Palestine by Jewish irregular forces between April 9 and April 11, 1948. This occurred during a period of increasing local Arab-Jewish fighting about one month prior to the regional outbreak of the much larger 1948 Middle East war. Reports of the event and the exaggerated number of casualties had considerable contemporary impact on the conflict, and were a major cause of Arab civilian flight from Palestine. The circumstances, nature, evaluation, and scope of the Deir Yassin incident remain a source of discussion decades later.

Dissolution

The conflict between Lehi and mainstream Jewish and subsequently Israeli organizations came to an end when Lehi was formally dissolved and integrated into the Israeli Defense Forces on May 31, 1948, its leaders getting amnesty from prosecution or reprisals as part of the integration.

Assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte

Although Lehi had stopped operating nationally after May 1948, the group continued to function in Jerusalem. On 17 September 1948, Lehi assassinated the UN Mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, who had been sent to broker a settlement in the dispute. The assassination was directed by Yehoshua Zetler and carried out by a four-man team led by Meshulam Makover. The fatal shots were fired by Yehoshua Cohen. Lehi leaders Nathan Yellin-Mor and Matitiahu Schmulevitz were arrested two months afterwards, with Yellin-Mor being sentenced to eight years in prison, though most of other the suspects involved were released immediately. The group was then forcefully broken up for good.

Into politics

Some left-wing members of the Lehi founded a political party called the Fighters List with the jailed Yellin-Mor as its head. The party fought the elections in January 1949 and won one seat. Thanks to a general amnesty for Lehi members granted on 14 February, 1948, Yellin-Mor was released from prison to take up place in the Knesset. However, the party disbanded after failing to win a seat in the 1951 elections.

Lehi remembered

In 1980 Israel instituted the Lehi ribbon, red, black, grey, pale blue and white which is awarded to former members of the Lehi underground who wished to carry it.

In 1999, the Magshimey Herut movement was founded as an educational Zionist organization for young adults. Although officially a movement aligned with the ideology of Zeev Jabotinsky and Revisionist Zionism, it has been argued that the movement is actually closer to Lehi in philosophy. Much of Magshimey Herut's written and educational material seem directly influenced by the teachings of Avraham Stern, Uri Zvi Greenberg and Israel Eldad.

Justifying terror

An article titled "Terror" in He Khazit (The Front, a Lehi underground newspaper) argued as follows.

Neither Jewish morality nor Jewish tradition can negate the use of terror as a means of battle.
...

We are quite far from moral hesitations on the national battlefield. We see before us the command of the Torah, the most moral teaching in the world: Obliterate—until destruction. We are particularly far from this sort of hesitation in regard to an enemy whose moral perversion is admitted by all.

But primarily terror is part of our political battle under present conditions and its role is large and great.

• It demonstrates, in clear language, to those who listen throughout the world and to our despondent brothers outside the gates of this country of our battle against the true terrorist who hides behind his piles of papers and the laws he has legislated.
• It is not directed against people, it is directed against representatives. Therefore it is effective.
• If it also shakes the Yishuv from their complacency, good and well.

Only so will the battle for liberation begin.

Criticism

Some writers have claimed that Lehi's true goals were the creation of a totalitarian state. Others have asserted that the organisation's ideology placed "its world view in the quasi-fascist radical Right, which is characterised by xenophobia, a national egotism that completely subordinates the individual to the needs of the nation, anti-liberalism, total denial of democracy and a highly centralised government." Its leader, Avraham Stern, lost much support after seeking a modus vivendi with Nazi Germany. Perliger and Weinberg claim that most Lehi members were admirers of the Italian Fascist movement. However, authoritarianist principles do not appear in the Principles of Rebirth which is the organization's Charter. The founder of the group, Yair Stern commented on the Principles saying that "We... want to establish the Kingdom of Israel and to rebuild it on the eternal foundations of Fraternity, Respect and Friendship to all the nation's sons whoever they are". While Yair Stern studied in Italy he refused to join the Fascist student association called "Gruppo Universitario Fascista" that foreign students were invited to, in spite of the fact that those joined were given serious reductions in tuition. Moreover, during the time he spent in Russia, Stern was actually a member of the Pioneer movement which was the young pre-Komsomol layer of the communist Party in the USSR. He also created the Histadrut of the Hebrew Tzofim Hashomer Hatzair in Suwałki which derived its ideology from youth organizations Hatzofim and socialist movements like Hashomer Hatzair and Hehalutz.

The Lehi Anthem "Unknown Soldiers"

The lyrics of "Unknown Soldiers" were written by Avraham 'Yair' Stern, the founder of Lehi. This was one of the first songs written by 'Yair'. Yair composed the song together with his wife Roni. The song became the anthem of Etzel and remained so until 1940 when Lehi broke into a separate group. In the song there's an expression of unlimited willingness to sacrifice. The anthem is used by veteran members of the group in gatherings as well as by some political groups from time to time, from both ends of the political map.

Full text of the song :

Notes

1. "Stern Gang" A Dictionary of World History. Oxford University Press, 2000. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.
2. "notorious terrorists long known as the Stern group"
3. Heller, p. 112, quoted in Perliger and Weinberg, 2003, pp. 106-107.
4. Perliger and Weinberg, 2003, p. 107.
5. Amichal, page 316, a copy on the web exists here
6. Perliger and Weinberg, 2003, p. 109.
7. Boyer Bell, 1996, p. 71.
8. Perliger and Weinberg, 2003, p. 109.
9. N. Ben-Yehuda, Political Assassinations by Jews (State University of New York, 1993), p397.
10. Shamir, Moshe pages 399-400
11. Heller, 1995, p. 86.
12. David Yisraeli, The Palestine Problem in German Politics, 1889-1945, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel, 1974. Also see Otto von Hentig, Mein Leiben (Goettingen, 1962) pp 338-339
13. A Meeting in Beirut, Habib Canaan, Haaretz (musaf), 27 March 1970
14. Full details depicted in Ada Amichal Yevin, "In Purple", The Life of Yair - Abraham Stern", Hadar Publishing House Tel Aviv, 1986, pp. 225-230
15. Ben-Yehuda, 1998, pp. 150-152.
16. Yitzhak Shamir, 'Why the Lehi Assassinated Lord Moyne', Nation, 32/119 (1995) pp. 333-7 (Hebrew) cited in Perliger and Weinberg, 2003, p. 111.
17. Kana'ana, Sharif and Zeitawi, Nihad (1987), "The Village of Deir Yassin," Bir Zeit, Bir Zeit University Press, 1987)
18. Milstein (1999), Chapter 16: Deir Yassin, Section 12: The Massacre, page 376: Only a modest number were young men classifiable as fighters
19. Milstein (1999), Chapter 16: Deir Yassin, Section 12: The Massacre, page 376-381
20. Morris (2005), page 100-101
21. Milstein (1999), Chapter 16: Deir Yassin, Section 16: Brutality and Hypocrisy, page 388: the leaders of ETZEL, LEHI, Hagana and MAPAM leaders had a vested interest in spreading the highly inflated version of the true facts
22. Milstein (1999), Chapter 17: April 9, Section 1: The Palestinian Refugees: The Beginning, page 397-399
23. Morris (2004) Chanter 4: The second wave: the mass exodus, Arpil—June 1948, Section: Operation Nahshon, page 239: IZL leaders may have had an interest, then and later, in exaggerating the panic-generating effects of Deir Yassin, but they were certainly not far off the mark. In the Jerusalem Corridor area, the effect was certainly immediate and profound.
24. He Khazit (underground publication of Lehi), Issue 2, August 1943. No author is stated, as was usual for this publication. Translated from original. For a discussion of this article, see Heller, p115
25. The italicised quotation is a combination of two Biblical references to the Amalekites, Exodus 17:14 and Numbers 14:45: "Utterly blot out their remembrance... and destroy them completely."
26. Attributed to Yitzhak Shamir, 1943, see Lustick (1994), p. 527. However, the original article in He Khazit does not give an author.
27. Heller, 1995, p. 70.
28. Perliger and Weinberg, 2003, p. 108.
29. "Stern Gang" The Oxford Companion to World War II. Ed. I. C. B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot. Oxford University Press, 2001.
30. Perliger and Weinberg, 2003, p. 107.
31. Lochamei Herut Yisrael (Lehi) , writings, chapter 1, pages 70-71
32. Amichal, 77
33. Amichal, 14
34. Amichal, page 16
35. Lyrics and data about the song on the Betar site Template:He icon

References

• Template:He icon Amichal Yevin, Ada (1986). In purple: the life of Yair-Abraham Stern. Tel Aviv: Hadar Publishing House.
• Bell, J. Bowyer (1977). Terror Out of Zion: Irgun Zvai Leumi, Lehi, and the Palestine Underground, 1929-1949. Avon. ISBN 0-380-39396-4
• Ben-Yehuda, Nachman (1998). Political Violence. Political Assassinations as a Quest for Justice. In Robert R. Friedmann (Ed.). Crime and Criminal Justice in Israel: Assessing The Knowledge base Toward The Twenty-first Century (pp. 139-184). SUNY Press. ISBN 0-7914-3713-2.
• Heller, J. (1995). The Stern Gang. Frank Cass. ISBN 0-7146-4558-3
• Lustick, Ian S. (1994). "Terrorism in the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Targets and Audiences." In Crenshaw, Martha (ed). Terrorism in Context (pp. 514-552). University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01015-0
• Marton, K. (1994). A death in Jerusalem. Pantheon. ISBN 0-679-42083-5 — Bernadotte assassination
• Template:He icon Shamir, Moshe, Yair Biography, 2001, Zmora-Bitan
• Munson, Henry (2005). Religion and violence. Religion, 35: 223-246.
• Perliger, Arie and Weinberg, Leonard (2003). Jewish Self-Defence and Terrorist Groups Prior to the Establishment of the State of Israel: Roots and Traditions. Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Volume 4, Number 3, pp. 91-118.

See also

• Avraham Stern
• Irgun
• Israel
• Israel Eldad
• Magshimey Herut
• Yitzhak Shamir
• List of massacres committed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war
• Cairo-Haifa train bombings 1948
• Deir Yassin massacre

External links

• Lehi's website (Hebrew): http://www.lehi.org.il/
• Lehi writings in English: http://www.saveisrael.com/
• British wanted poster from 1940s

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• Lehi
• Designated terrorist organizations