Lehi (group) - Relationship With Fascism and Socialism

Relationship With Fascism and Socialism

Unlike the left-wing Haganah and right-wing Irgun, Lehi members were not a homogeneous collective with a single political, religious, or economic ideology. They were a combination of militants united by the goal of liberating the land of Israel from British rule. Most Lehi leaders defined their organization as an anti-imperialism movement and stated that their opposition to British colonial rule in Palestine was not based on a particular policy but rather on the presence of a foreign power over the homeland of the Jewish people. Avraham Stern defined the British Mandate as “foreign rule” regardless of British policies and took a radical position against such imperialism even if it were to be benevolent.

In the early years of the state of Israel Lehi veterans could be found supporting nearly all political parties and some Lehi leaders founded a left-wing political party called the Fighters' List with Natan Yellin-Mor as its head. The party took part in the elections in January 1949 and won a single parliamentary seat. A number of Lehi veterans established the Semitic Action movement in 1956 which sought the creation of a regional federation encompassing Israel and its Arab neighbors on the basis of an anti-colonialist alliance with other indigenous inhabitants of the Middle East.

Some writers have stated that Lehi's true goals were the creation of a totalitarian state. Perlinger and Weinberg write that the organisation's ideology placed "its world view in the quasi-fascist radical Right, which is characterised by xenophobia, a national egotism that completely subordinates the individual to the needs of the nation, anti-liberalism, total denial of democracy and a highly centralised government." Perliger and Weinberg state that most Lehi members were admirers of the Italian Fascist movement.

Others counter these claims. They note that when Lehi founder Avraham Stern went to study in fascist Italy, he refused to join the "Gruppo Universitario Fascista" for foreign students, even though members got large reductions in tuition. Also, as a teenager in the Soviet Union, Stern was a member of the Young Pioneers, the children's branch of the Communist Party. While organizing for Irgun in Poland in the 1930s, Stern started a labor union organization (Histadrut) for the Tzofim Hashomer Hatzair in Suwałki, which followed the ideology of the socialist movement Hashomer Hatzair, and the youth organizations Hatzofim and Hechalutz.