Lechi Kurbanov

Lehi (; he, לח"י – לוחמי חרות ישראל ''Lohamei Herut Israel – Lehi'', "Fighters for the Freedom of Israel – Lehi"), 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, USA: 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, USA: 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, Limited, 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 and terrorist organization founded by Avraham ("Yair") Stern in Mandatory Palestine. 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, but was renamed Lehi one month later.Nachman Ben-Yehuda. ''The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel''. Madison, Wisconsin, USA: Wisconsin University Press, 1995. Pp. 322. The group referred to its members as terrorists and admitted to having carried out terrorist attacks.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."

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". 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, England, UK; Portland, Oregon, USA: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1995. Pp. 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 faired poorly in the first Israeli elections.

Lehi and the Irgun were jointly responsible for the massacre in Deir Yassin. Lehi assassinated Lord Moyne, British Minister Resident in the Middle East, and made many other attacks on the British in Palestine. 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, an act condemned by Bernadotte's replacement as mediator, Ralph Bunche. 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 Perlige
''Jewish Terrorism in Israel''
Columbia University Press, 2011 p.28. Just before the first Israeli elections in January 1949, a general amnesty to Lehi members was granted by the government. 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. 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. 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.

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 .G.Martin CID sergeant who had recognised Shamir in a lineupis 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.

''18 Principles of Rebirth''

Avraham Stern laid out the ideology of Lehi in the essay ''18 Principles of Rebirth'':Amichal, page 316, a copy on the web exist
here
/ref>

# 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.
# 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.
# 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.
# THE GOALS:
## Redemption of the land.
## Establishment of sovereignty.
## 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:
#

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)

# 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.
# PACTS: Make pacts with all those who are willing to help the struggle of the organization and provide direct support.
# 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.
# WAR: Constant war against those who stand in the way of fulfilling the goals.
# 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:
#

SOVEREIGNTY: Renewal of Hebrew sovereignty over the redeemed land.

# 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.
# REVIVING THE WILDERNESS: Build the ruins and revive the wilderness for mass immigration and population increase.
# ALIENS: Solve the problem of alien population .e. the Arab inhabitants of Palestine">Arab.html" ;"title=".e. the Arab">.e. the Arab inhabitants of Palestineby exchange of population.
# INGATHERING OF THE EXILES: Total aliyah">in-gathering of the exiles to their sovereign state.
# POWER: The Hebrew nation shall become a first-rate military, political, cultural and economical entity in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean Sea.
# 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.
# THE TEMPLE: The building of the Third Temple as a symbol of the new era of total redemption.

Relationship with fascism and socialism

Unlike the left-wing Haganah and right-wing Irgun, Lehi members were not a homogeneous collective with a single political, religious, or economic ideology. They were a combination of militants united by the goal of liberating the land of Israel from British rule. Most Lehi leaders defined their organization as an anti-imperialist movement and stated that their opposition to British colonial rule in Palestine was not based on a particular policy but rather on the presence of a foreign power over the homeland of the Jewish people. Avraham Stern defined the British Mandate as "foreign rule" regardless of British policies and took a radical position against such imperialism even if it were to be benevolent.

In the early years of the state of Israel, Lehi veterans could be found supporting nearly all political parties and some Lehi leaders founded a left-wing political party called the Fighters' List with Natan Yellin-Mor as its head. The party took part in the elections in January 1949 and won a single parliamentary seat. A number of Lehi veterans established the Semitic Action movement in 1956 which sought the creation of a regional federation encompassing Israel and its Arab neighbours on the basis of an anti-colonialist alliance with other indigenous inhabitants of the Middle East.Beinin, Joel (1998)
''The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora''
University of California Press. pp. 166

Some writers have stated that Lehi's true goals were the creation of a totalitarian state. Perlinger and Weinberg write 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."Perliger and Weinberg, 2003, p. 108. Perliger and Weinberg state that most Lehi members were admirers of the Italian Fascist movement. According to Kaplan and Penslar, Lehi's ideology was a mix of fascist and communist thought combined with racism and universalism.The Origins of Israel, 1882–1948: A Documentary History by Eran Kaplan, Derek J. Penslar state that "Lehi's ideology was a strange brew of fascism and communism, racism and universalism" The Origins of Israel, 1882–1948: A Documentary History - Page 274 Eran Kaplan, Derek J. Penslar - 2011

Others counter these claims. They note that when Lehi founder Avraham Stern went to study in fascist Italy, he refused to join the Gruppo Universitario Fascista for foreign students, even though members got large reductions in tuition.

Political racism

According to Yaacov Shavit, professor at the Department of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University, articles in Lehi publications contained references to a Jewish "master race", contrasting the Jews with Arabs who were seen as a "nation of slaves". Sasha Polakow-Suransky writes that "Lehi was also unabashedly racist towards Arabs. Their publications described Jews as a master race and Arabs as a slave race." Lehi advocated mass expulsion of all Arabs from Palestine and Transjordan, or even their physical annihilation.

In contrast, a number of Lehi veterans, including co-leader Nathan Yellin-Mor, went on to establish the Semitic Action movement which sought the creation of a regional federation encompassing Israel and its Arab neighbours on the basis of an anti-colonialist alliance with other indigenous inhabitants of the Middle East.

Evolution, tactics and organization

Many Lehi combatants had received military training. Some had attended the Military Engineers School in Civitavecchia, in Fascist Italy. Jakub Mielnik
Jak polacy stworzyli Izrael
, Focus.pl Historia, 5 May 2008 Others received military training from instructors of the Polish Armed Forces in 1938–1939. This training was conducted in Trochenbrod (Zofiówka) in Wołyń Voivodeship, Podębin near Łódź, and the forests around Andrychów. They were taught how to use explosives. One of them reported later: "Poles treated terrorism as a science. We have mastered mathematical principles of demolishing constructions made of concrete, iron, wood, bricks and dirt."

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. 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 against Lehi.Perliger and Weinberg, 2003, p. 109.

Stern's group was seen as a terrorist organisation by the British authorities, who instructed the Defence Security Office (the colonial branch of MI5) to track down its leaders. In 1942, Stern, after he was arrested, was shot dead in disputed circumstances by Inspector Geoffrey J. Morton of the CID. The arrest of several other members led momentarily to the group's eclipse, until it was revived after the September 1942 escape of two of its leaders, Yitzhak Shamir and Eliyahu Giladi, aided by two other escapees Natan Yellin-Mor (Friedman) and Israel Eldad (Sheib). (Giladi was later killed by Lehi under circumstances that remain mysterious.) Shamir's codename was "Michael", 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. After the killing of Giladi, the organization was led 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. However they also targeted Jews whom they regarded as traitors, and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War 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, more than twice as many as 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 for Israel and related organizations, operating entirely on its own throughout nearly all of its existence.

Lehi prisoners captured by the British generally refused to employ lawyers in their defence. The defendants would conduct their own defence, and would deny the right of the military court to try them, saying that in accordance with the Hague Convention they should be accorded the status of prisoners of war. For the same reason, Lehi prisoners refused to plead for amnesty, even when it was clear that this would have spared them the death penalty. Moshe Barazani, a Lehi member, and Meir Feinstein, an Irgun member, took their own lives in prison with a grenade smuggled inside an orange so the British could not hang them.

Activities and operations during World War II

Wartime contacts with Italy and Nazi Germany

Italy

In mid-1940, Stern became convinced that the Italians were interested in the establishment of a fascist Jewish state in Palestine. He conducted negotiations, he thought, with the Italians via an intermediary Moshe Rotstein, and drew up a document that became known as the "Jerusalem Agreement".Heller, 1995, p. 86 In exchange for Italy's recognition of, and aid in obtaining, Jewish sovereignty over Palestine, Stern promised that Zionism would come under the aegis of Italian fascism, with Haifa as its base, and the Old City of Jerusalem under Vatican control, except for the Jewish quarter. In Heller's words, Stern's proposal would "turn the 'Kingdom of Israel' into a satellite of the Axis powers."

However, the "intermediary" Rotstein was in fact an agent of the Irgun, conducting a sting operation under the direction of the Irgun intelligence leader in Haifa, Israel Pritzker, in cooperation with the British. Secret British documents about the affair were uncovered by historian Eldad Harouvi (now director of the Palmach Archives) and confirmed by former Irgun intelligence officer Yitzhak Berman

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