Jewish Nazis? For obvious reasons, most find the idea absurd, or even a contradiction in terms. But surprisingly, Israel did once have it's very own fascist movement, and it's very own would be dictator...
Avraham Stern was born on December 23, 1907 in the village of Suwalki in Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. When World War One broke out, he, his mother, and his brother David, fled to Russia to escape the carnage. Growing up in Russia during the First World War and the Russian Revolution was obviously not easy, so it's not surprising that Stern, like many other Jews of his generation, became attracted to the Zionist movement at an early age.
After his mother's death, he decided he had no more reason to stay in Russia, so at the age of 18, he moved to Israel, then a British colony. When the Arabs of Palestine started a pogrom against the Jews in 1929, Stern served with a Jewish socialist militia. A few years later, Stern was awarded a scholarship to study at a university in Florence, Italy. While in Italy, Stern became impressed with Benito Mussolini's fascist movement. He saw how Mussolini had seemingly brought order and pride to the once disorderly and divided Italian nation, and decided that the Jews needed their own strong leader to save them from the horrors of foreign domination. He decided that he would be Israel's secular messiah.
After completing college, Stern spent the rest of the 1930s organizing Jewish militias, and smuggling Jewish immigrants into Palestine against the will of the British colonial authorities. As a result, the British arrested him in 1939. In mid 1940 he managed to escape, and founded a new militia called the Lehi, a Hebrew acronym that stood for Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, promising to establish a Jewish state based on "Nationalist and totalitarian principles". In addition to adopting fascist ideology, the Lehi copied many of the outward trappings of Mussolini's movement as well. They wore black uniforms, and even used the fascist salute. As their symbol, they adopted the half clinched fist, in reference to Psalms 137:5. ("If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget it's skill!")
Stern's hatred for the British colonial authorities was so great, that he was willing to work with the Axis to achieve his goal of driving the British out of Israel. However, he attracted very little support from either the wider Jewish community, who opposed Nazism and supported the British, or Hitler, who obviously preferred to support the Arabs. As a result, the Lehi was forced to carry out it's guerilla campaign against the British on it's own.
Inevitably, Stern's terrorist campaign failed, and on February 12, 1942, he was shot by British troops in Tel Aviv. After Stern's death, the Lehi movement began to fade away. After World War II they tried to get support from Stalin's Soviet Union, again without success, and by the founding of Israel in 1948, the movement was dissolved.
Stern's story serves as a warning that people of all, ethnic groups, not just white "Aryans" can fall prey to dangerous ideologies...
No comments:
Post a Comment