The_Info_Web/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PARAMILITARY/Stern Gang.md

updated	tags	category	summary	start	end	location
2026-10-12	Organization Paramilitary Israel Terrorism	Paramilitary	The Stern Gang was another name for LEHI (Lohamei Herut Israel, Hebrew for Fighters for the Liberation of Israel), a Jewish terrorist group founded by Avraham Stern and later led by Yitzhak Shamir.	1940	1948	Palestine

The Stern Gang was another name for LEHI (Lohamei Herut Israel, Hebrew for Fighters for the Liberation of Israel), a Jewish terrorist group founded by Avraham Stern and later led by Yitzhak Shamir.¹

Ari Ben-Menashe wrote that his father, Gourdji, was involved with the Stern Gang in Palestine in 1940. The group was known for its virulently anti-British stance, and Ben-Menashe wrote that Yitzhak Shamir was even willing to negotiate with the Nazi Germany for Jewish lives. They were persecuted by British and United States governments and the Jewish labor movement.¹

On September 17, 1948 the United Nations Mediator in Palestine, Folke Bernadotte, was assassinated in a Jewish-controlled part of Jerusalem.² A Central Intelligence Agency weekly summary of October 1948 reported that the Provisional Government of Israel had not apprehended the assassins and that many members of the Stern Gang were still at large.³

Yehoshua Zettler (also spelled Zeitler) and Meshulam Markover described the Bernadotte killing on Israeli television and radio on September 9, 1988. Zeitler said he directed it, Markover said he led the squad, and they said Yehoshua Cohen fired the shots.⁴ The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Zeitler said Shamir was not directly implicated in the act, while Israel 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.⁵ The Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem describes the Stern Gang as led after 1942 by a triumvirate of Eldad, Nathan Yellin-Mor and Shamir, and reports that the decision to kill the mediator was taken at meetings in June and September 1948.⁶ Shamir's role in founding LEHI in 1940, and as one of the three leaders after Stern's death in 1942, is recorded in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency's obituary of him.⁷

Footnotes

---

1. Ben-Menashe, Ari. Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network. Sheridan Square Press, 1992 (TrineDay reprint, 2015). ↩︎

2. Yearbook of the United Nations 1947-48, "Tributes to Count Bernadotte and Colonel Serot." https://archive.org/details/yearbook-of-the-united-nations_1947-1948 ↩︎

3. Central Intelligence Agency, weekly summary, October 1948 (CIA-RDP78-01617A002100020001-5). https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp78-01617a002100020001-5 ↩︎

4. 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 ↩︎

5. "Israel refuses to apologize for 1948 assassination," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, September 1988. https://jta.org/archive/israel-refuses-to-apologize-for-1948-assassination ↩︎

6. Issa Nakhleh, Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem, vol. 1 (1991). https://archive.org/details/encyclopedia-of-the-palestine-problem-volume-i ↩︎

7. "Yitzhak Shamir, Israel's 7th prime minister, dies at 96," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 2012. https://www.jta.org/?p=1789432 ↩︎