46 lines
4.6 KiB
Markdown
46 lines
4.6 KiB
Markdown
---
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updated: 2026-10-12
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tags:
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- Organization
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- Paramilitary
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- Israel
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- Terrorism
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category: "Paramilitary"
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summary: "LEHI (Lohamei Herut Israel), also called the Stern Gang, was a Jewish paramilitary group founded by Avraham Stern in 1940 and later led by Yitzhak Shamir, which assassinated British officials and others in Palestine."
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start: 1940
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end: 1948
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location: "Palestine"
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relations:
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- type: member_of
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with: "[[Yitzhak Shamir]]"
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reverse: true
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start: 1940
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end: 1948
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role: "founder, member and one of three leaders of the Stern Group"
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fn: 2
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---
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[[LEHI]] (Lohamei Herut Israel, Hebrew for Fighters for the Liberation of [[Israel]]), also known as the [[Stern Gang]], was a Jewish terrorist group. It was founded by [[Avraham Stern]] and later led by [[Yitzhak Shamir]].[^1]
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[[Ari Ben-Menashe]] wrote that his father, [[Gourdji]], was involved with LEHI in [[Palestine]] during 1940. Although the organization had a reputation as right-wing, many of its members were formerly part of the communist movement. LEHI was virulently anti-British, and Ben-Menashe wrote that Yitzhak Shamir was even willing to negotiate with the [[Nazi Germany|Nazis]] for Jewish lives, offering to fight alongside German troops against the British if the Germans would allow interned Jews to emigrate to Palestine.[^1]
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LEHI members were persecuted and hunted down, even by other Jews in Palestine, due to opposition from the British, [[United States|U.S.]] governments, and the Jewish labor movement. Most individuals affiliated with the Stern Gang were not welcomed in the State of Israel after its establishment. Yitzhak Shamir was an exception, becoming a prominent figure in [[Mossad]].[^1]
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### Founding and Leadership
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LEHI was founded in 1940 as a splinter of the [[Irgun Zvai Leumi|Irgun]], which Yitzhak Shamir had joined in 1937; Shamir was one of its founders. After the death of Avraham Stern in 1942 the group was led by three men, Shamir, [[Israel Eldad]] and [[Nathan Yellin-Mor]].[^2][^3]
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### Lord Moyne and Folke Bernadotte
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On November 6, 1944 two members of LEHI, Eliahu Bet-Tsuri and Eliahu Hakim, shot [[Lord Moyne]], the British minister resident in the Middle East, outside his house in [[Cairo]], killing his driver as well. They admitted the killing in court and were executed in early 1945.[^4] [[Anthony Eden]] told the House of Commons on November 9, 1944 that the prisoners had confessed: "We are members of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel organisation and what we have done was done on the instructions of this organisation. The organisation is that known as the Stern Group."[^5]
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On September 9, 1988 Yehoshua Zettler (also spelled Zeitler) said on Israeli radio that he directed the September 17, 1948 assassination of the United Nations Mediator in Palestine, [[Folke Bernadotte]], and Meshulam Markover said he led the four-man squad. They said Yehoshua Cohen fired the shots. A spokesman for Shamir, then prime minister, said Shamir had played no role because the group had disbanded six months earlier.[^6] The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Zeitler said Shamir was not directly implicated in the act, while Eldad said Shamir was one of four men who planned assassinations but could not confirm that he attended the meeting that ordered this one. Sweden's demand for a second apology was refused.[^7] The Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem states that the three leaders met in June and September 1948 to decide on the killing.[^3]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. Sheridan Square Press, 1992 (TrineDay reprint, 2015).
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[^2]: "Yitzhak Shamir, Israel's 7th prime minister, dies at 96," _Jewish Telegraphic Agency_, July 2012. https://www.jta.org/?p=1789432
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[^3]: Issa Nakhleh, _Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem_, vol. 1 (1991), entries on the Stern Gang, Lord Moyne and Count Bernadotte. https://archive.org/details/encyclopedia-of-the-palestine-problem-volume-i
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[^4]: "The Assassination of Lord Moyne," _Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England_. https://www.jhse.org/pre-2015articles/the-assassination-of-lord-moyne
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[^5]: "Assassination of Lord Moyne," HC Deb 9 November 1944, vol. 404, cols. 1538-41. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1944/nov/09/assassination-of-lord-moyne
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[^6]: John Kifner, "2 Recount '48 Killing in Israel," _The New York Times_, 12 September 1988, p. A3. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/12/world/2-recount-48-killing-in-israel.html
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[^7]: "Israel refuses to apologize for 1948 assassination," _Jewish Telegraphic Agency_, September 1988. https://jta.org/archive/israel-refuses-to-apologize-for-1948-assassination
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