The Intellectual Foundations of Jewish National Terrorism: Avraham Stern and the Lehi

The Lehi, a fringe Jewish paramilitary group created in 1940, conducted a concerted terrorist campaign against the British authorities in Palestine during and after World War II, proclaiming that its activities were undertaken in the name of national liberation. Lehi was founded and led by Avraham Stern, also known as “Yair.” Scholar, intellectual, and poet, Stern developed a fundamental ideology of national and messianic Jewish terrorism, which became the ideological basis not only for the work of the Lehi, but also for later Jewish terrorist activism. The present article examines the intellectual foundations of Lehi terrorism and how its intellectual and ideological principles influenced Lehi's most controversial activities—internal terrorism and the execution of its own members. In conclusion, the author traces the impact of Stern's intellectual legacy on later generations of Jewish terrorists.