Lohamei Herut Yisrael

LOHAMEI HERUT YISRAEL

Zionist underground militia whose name translates as "fighters for the freedom of Israel," abbreviated as LEHI.

Lohamei Herut Yisrael, or LEHI, also known as the Stern Gang, was founded on 26 June 1940 by Abraham (Yaʿir) Stern in a split with the Irgun Zvaʾi Leʾumi (IZL) over ideology and tactics. It would always remain small, ranging from 200 to 800 members. Stern and his followers viewed Britain as the foremost enemy of the Jewish people and of Zionism and rejected the Irgun's declared truce with Britain for the duration of the Second World War. LEHI's ideology was an evolving blend of fascist, Bolshevik, and messianic nationalist elements, which led the organization in its early years to see Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and later the Soviet Union, as potential allies in the "anti-imperialist" armed struggle against Britain.

In 1941 the group tried to reach an agreement with Nazi Germany in the hope of ousting Britain from Palestine. From 1940 to 1944, while the other Zionist underground groups, including the Irgun, were cooperating with Britain in the war effort, LEHI carried out an anti-British campaign of propaganda and terror attacks, setting off bombs, killing soldiers and police officers, and robbing banks to fund their activities. On 9 January 1942, LEHI members accidentally killed two Jewish bystanders in an attempted robbery of a Histadrut bank in Tel Aviv. The Zionist leadership and the majority in the Yishuv opposed LEHI's methods; LEHI was widely regarded by both Jews and the British as a terrorist underground and was often ostracized and persecuted as such. In the early months of 1942, members of Haganah intelligence and the Palmah began kidnapping LEHI fighters, a policy that would continue on and off until the group's final demise in 1948.

LEHI entered a crisis period when Stern was killed by members of the British Criminal Investigation Division (CID) on 12 February 1942. By 1943 the organization had been reconstructed under the leadership of Natan Yellin-Mor, Israel Eldad, and Yitzhak Shamir. Ideologically, LEHI moved to the left after Stern's death, openly embracing the Soviet Union and class struggle in addition to anti-imperialism. It would always remain marginal ideologically but at various times would cooperate organizationally with the other underground groups. When the Irgun began its armed revolt against Britain in February 1944, LEHI joined in. In coordination with the Irgun, LEHI attacked or bombed British military and administrative sites in Palestine, including police and radio stations and CID headquarters.

On 6 November 1944, LEHI members assassinated Walter Edward Guinness, Lord Moyne, the senior British minister in Cairo. The assassination led the Yishuv leadership to initiate operations known as "the Saison" to liquidate the dissident underground organizations. In 1945 and 1946, LEHI was an active member of the Hebrew Resistance Movement, an ad hoc framework that coordinated anti-British operations among all the Jewish undergrounds. In April 1948 LEHI participated with the Irgun in the attack on the Arab village Dayr Yasin. On 17 September 1948 LEHI members assassinated the United Nations mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, in Jerusalem. Following this incident David Ben-Gurion declared the organization illegal and it was forcibly dismantled. Its members established a political party, the Fighters Party, which won only one seat (and 1.22 percent of the vote) in the elections for the first Knesset in 1949.

LEHI members became divided along ideological lines, with Yellin-Mor taking a strong leftist position advocating class struggle, a pro-Soviet foreign policy, and support for proletarian movements in Arab countries. Eldad led the right-wing faction that embraced positions in line with Revisionist maximalism, while Shamir took a less ideological and more pragmatic stance. The split ultimately proved irreconcilable, and the Fighters Party did not survive to the second Knesset elections in 1951. Some members drifted to MAPAM or the Israeli Communist Party, while others joined Menachem Begin's Herut.

see also bernadotte, folke; dayr yasin; guinness, walter edward; irgun zvaʾi leʾumi (izl); shamir, yitzhak; stern, abraham; yellin-mor, natan.

Bibliography

Bell, J. Bowyer. Terror out of Zion: The Fight for Israeli Independence. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996.

Heller, Joseph. The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics, and Terror, 1940–1949. Portland, OR; London: Frank Cass, 1995.

Sofer, Sasson. Zionism and the Foundations of Israeli Diplomacy, translated by Dorothea Shefet-Vanson. New York and Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

pierre m. atlas