Page 368 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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348———Stern Gang

According to Shamir’s own account, the Stern
STERN GANG Gang tried to assassinate Sir Harold MacMichael, the

aka Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, Lehi, British high commissioner in Palestine, several times,
Lohami Heruth Israel failing at each attempt. The group was successful,
however, with a 1944 plot to murder Lord Moyne, the
British minister resident in the Middle East.
In the years immediately before and after 1948, the In 1948, after the Israeli War of Independence was
year Israel became an independent nation, Avraham virtually finished, the group assassinated Count Folke
Stern’s extreme Jewish nationalist group used terror Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat appointed by the
tactics to fight against British control of Palestine. United Nations to mediate the dispute between Arabs
British detractors called the group the Stern Gang, and Israelis. Just three years earlier, Bernadotte had
while members called their organization Lehi, a secured the release of 21,000 prisoners bound for
Hebrew acronym for Freedom Fighters of Israel. The extermination by the Nazis. After being appointed the
gang was the smallest and fiercest of the underground U.N. trouble-shooter in the Middle East, Bernadotte,
groups fighting the British. the former president of the Red Cross and a nephew
In 1940, Stern and other members of the Jewish of the king of Sweden, raised the idea of ceding
group Irgun Zvai Leumi broke away to form Lehi Jerusalem to the Palestinians. According to statements
because they disagreed with the Irgun leaders’ deci- made by former gang members, four Stern Gang men
sion to stop the struggle against the British and join attacked Bernadotte in his car and then shot and killed
the war effort against the Nazis. (Irgun, led by Men- both him and his French aide-de-camp.
achem Begin, is most notorious for bombs placed in Israel subsequently outlawed the group, and after
Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in 1946 that killed 1949 members of both Lehi and Irgun drifted into
many British administrators.) Stern and his colleagues fringe politics and relative obscurity until Begin rose
considered the British empire to be the enemy of the to prominence as a national politician. He became
Jewish people; subscribing to the philosophy of “my Israel’s prime minister in 1977 and paved the way for
enemy’s enemy is my friend,” they even attempted to Shamir, who was elected in 1983.
win support from Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler
for Palestine as a place of refuge for European Jews. See also IRGUN ZVAI LEUMI; KING DAVID HOTEL BOMBING
Beginning in 1940, Lehi waged a campaign against
the British that included assassinations, bank rob- Further Reading
beries, and bombings; while the British were the
Heller, Joseph. The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics, and Ter-
gang’s primary targets, Jews and Arabs also died in ror, 1940-1949. London: Frank Cass, 1995.
their attacks. Mainstream Zionists condemned the Marton, Kati. A Death in Jerusalem. New York: Pantheon,
group, and British detectives hunted Stern, killing him 1994.
in 1942. After Stern’s death,Yitzhak Shamir took con- Shamir, Yitzhak. Summing Up, an Autobiography. London:
trol of the gang, along with his colleagues Natan Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1994.
Friedman Yellin and Yisrael Sheib. Shamir, who was
elected prime minister of Israel in 1983, took the nom
de guerre Micail in honor of Irish Republican Army STOCKHOLM SYNDROME
leader Michael Collins.
Shamir was a man of many disguises, including
bearded Orthodox Jew, Polish soldier, and blind man. The Stockholm syndrome is a common psycholog-
He was caught three times by the British, escaped ical response that occurs in hostages, as well as other
from prison in 1942, and was deported to prison in captives, wherein the captive begins to identify
Eritrea in 1943. He escaped from the Eritrean prison closely with the captors and their agenda and
camp by digging a tunnel. While Shamir was in demands.
Eritrea, his cohorts in Palestine hunted down Sergeant The name of the syndrome refers to a botched bank
T. G. Martin, the British policeman who had identified robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. In August 1973, two
him, following him to a tennis court where they shot men held four bank employees of Sveriges Kreditbank
him to death. in an 11-by-47-foot bank vault for six days. During the