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Lehi (militant group)

Fighters for the Freedom of Israel
לוחמי חרות ישראל‎
Also known asStern Gang
Lehi
LeaderAvraham Stern[a]
FoundationAugust 1940 (August 1940)
Dissolved28 May 1948 (28 May 1948)
Split fromIrgun
CountryMandatory Palestine
Israel
AllegianceYishuv
NewspaperHamaas (weekly)[4][5][b]
Ideology
Political positionSyncretic[9]
Notable attacksKilling of Lord Moyne
Cairo–Haifa train bombings
Deir Yassin massacre
Killing of Folke Bernadotte
SizeFewer than 300 members
Part ofJewish Resistance Movement
Opponents British Empire
Battles and warsIntercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine
Jewish Revolt in Palestine
1947–48 Palestine Civil War
1948 Palestine war
Flag

Lehi (Hebrew pronunciation: [ˈleχi]; Hebrew: לח״י, sometimes abbreviated "LHI"), officially the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (Hebrew: לוחמי חרות ישראל, romanized: Lohamei Herut Israel) and often known pejoratively as the Stern Gang,[10][11][12][13] was a Zionist paramilitary militant organization founded by Avraham ("Yair") Stern in Mandatory Palestine.[14][15][16] Its avowed aim was to evict the British authorities from Palestine by use of violence, allowing unrestricted immigration of Jews and the formation of a Jewish state. It was initially called the National Military Organization in Israel,[17] upon being founded in August 1940, but was renamed Lehi one month later.[18] The group referred to its members as terrorists[19] and admitted to having carried out acts of terrorism.[14][20][21]

Lehi split from the Irgun militant group in 1940 in order to continue fighting the British during World War II. It initially sought an alliance with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.[22] Believing that Nazi Germany was a lesser enemy of the Jews than Britain, Lehi twice attempted to form an alliance with the Nazis, proposing a Jewish state based on "nationalist and totalitarian principles, and linked to the German Reich by an alliance".[22][23] After Stern's death in 1942, the new leadership of Lehi began to move towards support for Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union[17] and the ideology of National Bolshevism, which was considered an amalgam of both right and left.[24][22] Regarding themselves as "revolutionary Socialists", the new Lehi developed a highly original ideology combining an "almost mystical" belief in Greater Israel with support for the Arab liberation struggle.[17] This sophisticated ideology failed to gain public support and Lehi fared poorly in the first Israeli elections.[25]

In April of 1948, Lehi and the Irgun were jointly responsible for the massacre in Deir Yassin of at least 107 Palestinian Arab villagers, including women and children. Lehi assassinated Lord Moyne, British Minister Resident in the Middle East, and made many other attacks on the British in Palestine.[26] On 29 May 1948, the government of Israel, having inducted its activist members into the Israel Defense Forces, formally disbanded Lehi, though some of its members carried out one more terrorist act, the assassination of Folke Bernadotte some months later,[27] an act condemned by Bernadotte's replacement as mediator, Ralph Bunche.[28] After the assassination, the new Israeli government declared Lehi a terrorist organization, arresting some 200 members and convicting some of the leaders.[29] Just before the first Israeli elections in January 1949, a general amnesty to Lehi members was granted by the government.[29] In 1980, Israel instituted a military decoration, an "award for activity in the struggle for the establishment of Israel", the Lehi ribbon.[30] Former Lehi leader Yitzhak Shamir became Prime Minister of Israel in 1983.

  1. ^ "סמל לח״י". Archived from the original on 18 May 2020. Retrieved 12 September 2019.
  2. ^ Nachman Ben-Yehuda. The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel. Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 1995. pp. 322.
  3. ^ "Yitzhak Shamir, Israel's modest, hardline ex-PM, dies at 96". The Times of Israel.
  4. ^ Khalidi, 1971, p. 606.
  5. ^ Cmd. 6873.
  6. ^ Shapira, Anita (1999). Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881–1948. Stanford University Press. p. 347. ISBN 0804737762.
  7. ^ The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics and Terror, 1940–1949 Joseph Heller p. 114 "Above all, in the summer of 1943 Lehi had still not broken free from the doctrine of persecutor and enemy'. Even after the extent of the Holocaust was revealed, Lehi refused to depict Hitler rather than England as the main foe."
  8. ^ Heller, Joseph (1995). "The Zionist Right and National Liberation: From Jabotinsky to Avraham Stern". In Wistrich, Robert S.; Ohana, David (eds.). The Shaping of Israeli Identity: Myth, Memory, and Trauma. Routledge. p. 88. ISBN 978-0-714-64641-1.
  9. ^ Sasson Sofer. Zionism and the Foundations of Israeli Diplomacy. Cambridge University Press, 2007. pp. 254. "Lehi's leader Stern stated that he incorporated elements of both the left and the right."
  10. ^ "This group was known to its friends as LEHI and to its enemies as the Stern Gang." Blumberg, Arnold. History of Israel, Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated, 1998. p 106.
  11. ^ "calling themselves Lohamei Herut Yisrael (LHI) or, less generously, the Stern Gang." Lozowick, Yaacov. Right to Exist : A Moral Defense of Israel's Wars. Westminster, MD: Doubleday Publishing, 2003. p. 78.
  12. ^ "It ended in a split with Stern leading his own group out of the Irgun. This was known pejoratively by the British as "the Stern Gang' – later as Lehi" Shindler, Colin. Triumph of Military Zionism : Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right. London, GBR: I.B. Tauris & Company, Ltd., 2005. p. 218.
  13. ^ "Known by their Hebrew acronym as LEHI they were more familiar, not to say notorious, to the rest of the world as the Stern Gang – a ferociously effective and murderous terrorist group fighting to end British rule in Palestine and establish a Jewish state." Cesarani, David. Major Faran's Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain's War Against Jewish Terrorism, 1945–1948. London. Vintage Books. 2010. p 01.
  14. ^ a b Arie Perliger, William L. Eubank, Middle Eastern Terrorism, 2006 p. 37: "Lehi viewed acts of terrorism as legitimate tools in the realization of the vision of the Jewish nation and a necessary condition for national liberation."
  15. ^ "Eliahu Amikam – Stern Gang Leader". The Washington Post. 16 August 1995. pp. D5. Archived from the original (Free Preview; full article requires payment.) on 18 March 2009. Retrieved 18 November 2008. The [AMIKAM] Stern Gang – known in Hebrew as Lehi, an acronym for Israel Freedom Fighters – was the most militant of the pre-state underground groups.
  16. ^ "Definition of Stern Gang in English". Oxford Dictionaries. Archived from the original on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
  17. ^ a b c Laqueur, Walter (2003) [1972]. "Jabotinsky and Revisionism". A History of Zionism (Google Book Search) (3rd ed.). London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks. p. 377. ISBN 978-1-86064-932-5. OCLC 249640859. Retrieved 18 November 2008.
  18. ^ Nachman Ben-Yehuda. The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel. Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 1995. pp. 322.
  19. ^ Calder Walton (2008). "British Intelligence and the Mandate of Palestine: Threats to British national security immediately after the Second World War". Intelligence and National Security. 23 (4): 435–462. doi:10.1080/02684520802293049. ISSN 0268-4527. S2CID 154775965.
  20. ^ Jean E. Rosenfeld, Terrorism, Identity, and Legitimacy: The Four Waves Theory and Political Violence, 2010 p. 161 n. 7: 'Lehi ... was the last group to identify itself as a terrorist one'
  21. ^ Cite error: The named reference khazit was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  22. ^ a b c Sasson Sofer. Zionism and the Foundations of Israeli Diplomacy. Cambridge University Press, 2007. pp. 253–254.
  23. ^ Leslie Stein,The Hope Fulfilled: The Rise of Modern Israel, Greenwood Publishing Group 2003 pp. 237–238.
  24. ^ Robert S. Wistrich, David Ohana. The Shaping of Israeli Identity: Myth, Memory, and Trauma, Issue 3. London; Portland, Oregon: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1995. p. 88.
  25. ^ Joseph Heller. The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics, and Terror, 1940–1949. p. 8.
  26. ^ Ami Pedahzur, The Israeli Response to Jewish Extremism and Violence: Defending Democracy, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York 2002 p. 77
  27. ^ Perliger, Arie; 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. 4 (3): 113–114. doi:10.1080/14690760412331326250. However, before its final demise, the Lehi carried out one final terrorist act that brought on a wide-ranging operation by the Israeli security forces against it, including an Israeli government decision to declare it a terrorist organisation. On 16 September 1948, Lehi members assassinated the Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, who came to Israel as a diplomat of the United Nations. Apparently the reasons for the assassination were grounded in the Lehi's basic lack of trust in the temporary Israeli government.
  28. ^ Ralph Bunche report on assassination of UN mediator Archived 7 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine 27 September 1948, "notorious terrorists long known as the Stern group"
  29. ^ a b Ami Pedahzur, Arie Perliger Jewish Terrorism in Israel, Columbia University Press, 2011 p. 28.
  30. ^ "Awards for military service towards the establishment of the State of Israel". Israeli Ministry of Defense. Archived from the original on 17 April 2006. Retrieved 17 September 2018. The ribbon is awarded to: All those who were members of the LEHI underground for a term of six months or more, in the period dating from 1940 up until the establishment of the State of Israel ... Presentation of the ribbon began in 1980.


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