Avraham Stern

For other people named Avraham Stern, see Avraham Stern (disambiguation).
This article is about founder of militant group Lehi. For his son and journalist, see Yair Stern (journalist).

Avraham Stern
Stern in 1942
Native name
אברהם שטרן
Nickname(s)Yair
BornDecember 23, 1907
Suwałki, Russian Empire
(present-day Poland)
DiedFebruary 12, 1942 (aged 34)
Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine
Cause of deathExecution by shooting
Buried
Nahalat Yitzhak Cemetery, Givatayim, Israel
32.072°N 34.804°E
Allegiance

Avraham Stern (Hebrew: אברהם שטרן, Avraham Shtern; December 23, 1907 – February 12, 1942), alias Yair (Hebrew: יאיר), was one of the leaders of the Jewish paramilitary organization Irgun. In September 1940, he founded a breakaway militant Zionist group named Lehi, called the "Stern Gang" by the British authorities and by the mainstream in the Yishuv Jewish establishment.[1] The group referred to its members as terrorists and admitted to having carried out terrorist attacks.[2][3][4]

Stern's legacy is controversial due to his organization unsuccessfully attempting to form an alliance with Nazi Germany against the British during World War II. He was captured and killed by British colonial police in 1942.[5]

  1. ^ Nachman Ben-Yehuda. The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel. Madison, Wisconsin, USA: Wisconsin University Press, 1995. Pp. 322.
  2. ^ Calder Walton (2008). "British Intelligence and the Mandate of Palestine: Threats to British national security immediately after the Second World War". Intelligence and National Security. 23 (4): 435–462. doi:10.1080/02684520802293049. S2CID 154775965.
  3. ^ 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."
  4. ^ Jean E. Rosenfeld, Terrorism, Identity, and Legitimacy: The Four Waves Theory and Political Violence, 2010 p.161 n.7:'Lehi ... was the last group to identify itself as a terrorist one'
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference TOI12 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).