Eighty-four years ago, in Tel Aviv, Avraham Stern was shot dead by the British colonial police. Operating under the nom de guerre "Yair," the founder of Lehi embodied an uncompromising underground struggle. A hunted leader as well as an intellectual, he chose the fight for independence over an academic career—ultimately making the supreme sacrifice.
Born in Poland in 1907, he made Aliyah on his own in 1925 and enrolled at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he met David Raziel. A close associate of Avraham Tehomi, he joined the Jerusalem Haganah and took part in defending Jewish communities during the 1929 pogroms. In 1931, he joined the Etzel (Irgun Zvai Leumi) and underwent officer training there.
An intellectual and poet, Stern wrote "Hayalim Almonim" ("The Anonymous Soldiers") in 1932; it became the anthem of the Irgun (Etzel) and later of Lehi. He adopted the underground alias "Yair" in tribute to Eleazar ben Yair, leader of the Zealots at Masada.
In 1938, he returned to Poland to procure weapons and to recruit, organize, and train thousands of men, convinced that the liberation of the Land of Israel would be achieved through armed struggle. In 1939, when the Etzel command agreed to temporary cooperation with the British authorities during the war, Yair opposed it: he refused to make a pact—even a provisional one—with the British colonial occupiers, who were blocking Aliyah at the very moment Europe's Jews were under threat.
He then founded Lehi—the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel—as a breakaway group from the Irgun (Etzel), establishing its core principles: the unity of the Jewish people, attachment to the Land of Israel, national liberation through clandestine armed action, the ingathering of the exiles, the revival of the Hebrew language, and historical continuity. Stern also incorporated a biblical vision of "redemption" and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.
Hunted for his fight against the British occupation, Stern lived underground, denounced by the left-wing Zionist establishment.
On the morning of February 12, 1942, while hiding in a Tel Aviv apartment, he was arrested during a British colonial police operation and shot twice in the back. Following his death, Lehi carried out high-profile operations ranging from Cairo and Jerusalem to Rome. The movement remained a significant force until the end of the British colonial mandate, prior to Israel's independence and the group's subsequent integration into the IDF. Lehi was notably led by Yitzhak Shamir, Israel's seventh Prime Minister.
Tel Hai.
Elie Levy is the Education Director of Betar France and a co-founder of the MEJF.