84 years ago, in Tel Aviv, Avraham Stern was shot dead by British colonial police. Under the nom de guerre “Yaïr”, the founder of Lehi embodies uncompromising clandestinity. A hunted leader, but also an intellectual, he chose the fight for independence rather than a university career - to the point of sacrifice.
Born in Poland in 1907, he made Aliyah alone in 1925 and entered the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he met David Raziel. Close to Avraham Tehomi, he joined the Jerusalem Haganah and participated in the defense of Jewish communities during the pogroms of 1929. In 1931, he joined the Etzel (Irgoun Zvaï Léoumi) and trained as an officer there.
Intellectual and poet, Stern wrote “Hayalim almonim” (“The Anonymous Soldiers”) in 1932, which became the anthem of Etzel, then Lehi. He adopted the clandestine name “Yaïr”, in homage to Eléazar Ben Yaïr, leader of the zealots of Massada.
In 1938, he returned to Poland to obtain weapons and recruit, organize and train thousands of men, convinced that the liberation of the Land of Israel would require armed struggle. In 1939, when the Etzel command accepted temporary cooperation with the British authorities during the war, Yaïr opposed it: he refused to make a pact, even temporarily, with the British colonial occupier, who blocked Aliyah at the very moment when the Jews of Europe were threatened.
He then founded Lehi, the Israel Freedom Fighters, a split from Etzel, whose principles were affirmed: uniqueness of the Jewish people, attachment to the Land of Israel, national liberation through clandestine and armed action, gathering of exiles, revival of Hebrew and historical continuity. Stern also includes a biblical horizon of “redemption” and the reconstruction of the Temple of Jerusalem.
Hunted for his fight against the British occupation, Stern lives in hiding, denounced by the left-wing Zionist establishment.
On the morning of February 12, 1942, hidden in an apartment in Tel Aviv, he was arrested during a British colonial police operation and shot twice in the back. After his death, the Lehi led resounding operations from Cairo to Rome via Jerusalem. The movement will last until the end of the British colonial mandate, before Israel's independence and then its integration into the IDF. Lehi will notably be headed by Yitshak Shamir, 7th Israeli Prime Minister.
Tel Hai.
Elie Levy is director of education at Betar de France and co-founder of the MEJF.