Lehi (; , sometimes abbreviated "LHI"), officially the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel () and often known pejoratively as the Stern Gang,"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."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."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."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. was a Zionist paramilitary militant organization founded by Avraham ("Yair") Stern in Mandatory Palestine in 1940. 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, upon being founded in August 1940, and considered its actions as necessary for achieving its national aims.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."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'
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.Sasson Sofer. Zionism and the Foundations of Israeli Diplomacy. Cambridge University Press, 2007. pp. 253–254. 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".Leslie Stein,The Hope Fulfilled: The Rise of Modern Israel, Greenwood Publishing Group 2003 pp. 237–238. After Stern's death in 1942, the new leadership of Lehi began to move towards support for Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union and the ideology of National Bolshevism, which was considered an amalgam of both right and left.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. 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. This sophisticated ideology failed to gain public support and Lehi fared poorly in the first Israeli elections.Joseph Heller. The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics, and Terror, 1940–1949. p. 8.
In April 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.Ami Pedahzur, The Israeli Response to Jewish Extremism and Violence: Defending Democracy, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York 2002 p. 77 On 29 May 1948, the government of Israel, having inducted the group's activist members into the Israel Defense Forces, formally disbanded Lehi, though some of its members carried out one final terrorist act, the assassination of Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte some months later, an act condemned by Bernadotte's replacement as mediator, Ralph Bunche.Ralph Bunche report on assassination of UN mediator 27 September 1948, "notorious terrorists long known as the Stern group" After the assassination, the new Israeli government declared Lehi a terrorist organization, arresting some 200 members and convicting some of the leaders.Ami Pedahzur, Arie Perliger Jewish Terrorism in Israel, Columbia University Press, 2011 p. 28. However, several months later, just before the first Israeli elections in January 1949, the government granted all Lehi prisoners amnesty under a state general order of pardon, and they were released. In 1980, Israel instituted a military decoration, an "award for activity in the struggle for the establishment of Israel", the Lehi ribbon. Former Lehi leader Yitzhak Shamir became Prime Minister of Israel in 1983.
Founding of Lehi
Lehi was created in August 1940 by Avraham Stern.Nachman Ben-Yehuda. The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel. Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 1995. pp. 322. Stern had been a member of the Irgun (Irgun Tsvai Leumi – "National Military Organization") high command. Zeev Jabotinsky, then the Irgun's supreme commander, had decided that diplomacy and working with Britain would best serve the Zionist cause. World War II was in progress, and Britain was fighting Nazi Germany. The Irgun suspended its underground military activities against the British for the duration of the war.
Stern argued that the time for Zionist diplomacy was over and that it was time for an armed struggle against the British. Like other Zionists, he objected to the White Paper of 1939, which restricted both Jewish immigration and Jewish land purchases in Palestine. For Stern, "no difference existed between Hitler and Chamberlain, between Dachau or Buchenwald and sealing the gates of Eretz Israel."
Stern wanted to open Palestine to all Jewish refugees from Europe and considered this to be the most important issue of the day. Britain would not allow this. Therefore, he concluded, the Yishuv (Jews of Palestine) should fight the British rather than support them in the war. When the Irgun made a truce with the British, Stern left the Irgun to form his own group, which he called Irgun Tsvai Leumi B'Yisrael ("National Military Organization in Israel"), later Lohamei Herut Israel ("Fighters for the Freedom of Israel"). In September 1940, the organization was officially named "Lehi", the Hebrew acronym of the latter name.
Stern and his followers believed that dying for the "foreign occupier" who was obstructing the creation of the Jewish State was useless. They differentiated between "enemies of the Jewish people" (the British) and "Jew haters" (the Nazis), believing that the former needed to be defeated and the latter manipulated.
In 1940, the idea of the Final Solution was still "unthinkable", and Stern believed that Hitler wanted to make Germany judenrein through emigration, as opposed to extermination.Colin Shindler, The Land Beyond Promise: Israel, Likud and the Zionist Dream, I.B. Tauris, 2002, p. 25: 'Stern perceived Hitler as the latest in a long line of anti-Semites who could be won over if the common interest was identified. In Palestine at that time, Stern was not alone in regarding Hitler as a persecutor and not an exterminator. The dream of attaining a Jewish state dominated Zionist thinking and the very idea of the Final Solution was unthinkable in 1940. Stern believed that Hitler wanted Germany to be judenrein through emigration'. In December 1940, Lehi contacted Germany with a proposal to aid German conquest in the Middle East in return for recognition of a Jewish state open to unlimited immigration.
Goals and ideology
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 Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) by armed force.Heller, p. 112, quoted in Perliger and Weinberg, 2003, pp. 106–107.
Lehi 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 Jewish military help; this would require the creation of a broad and organised military force "demonstrating its desire for freedom through military operations."Perliger and Weinberg, 2003, p. 107.
Lehi also referred to themselves as 'terrorists' and may have been one of the last organizations to do so.
An article titled "Terror" in the Lehi underground newspaper He Khazit (The Front) argued as follows:
Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: "Ye shall blot them out to the last man." But first and foremost, terrorism is for us a part of the political battle being conducted under the present circumstances, and it has a great part to play: speaking in a clear voice to the whole world, as well as to our wretched brethren outside this land, it proclaims our war against the occupier. We are particularly far from this sort of hesitation in regard to an enemy whose moral perversion is admitted by all.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, p. 115
The article described the goals of terror: It demonstrates ... 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.
Yitzhak Shamir, one of the three leaders of Lehi after Avraham Stern's assassination, argued for the legitimacy of Lehi's actions:
There are those who say that to kill Martin is terrorism, but to attack an army camp is guerrilla warfare and to bomb civilians is professional warfare. But I think it is the same from the moral point of view. Is it better to drop an atomic bomb on a city than to kill a handful of persons? I don't think so. But nobody says that President Truman was a terrorist. All the men we went for individually – Wilkin, Martin, MacMichael and others – were personally interested in succeeding in the fight against us.
So it was more efficient and more moral to go for selected targets. In any case, it was the only way we could operate, because we were so small. For us it was not a question of the professional honour of a soldier, it was the question of an idea, an aim that had to be achieved. We were aiming at a political goal. There are many examples of what we did to be found in the Bible – Gideon and Samson, for instance. This had an influence on our thinking. And we also learned from the history of other peoples who fought for their freedom – the Russian and Irish revolutionaries, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Josip Broz Tito.Bethell Nicholas, The Palestine Triangle: The Struggle between British, Jews, and the Arabs, 1935–48 (1979), p. 278
Relationship with fascism and socialism