The Village Voice, Internet Edition, Week of December
19-25, 2001:
From the Irv Rubin Bust to the Stern Gang: The
Rich History of Jewish Terrorism
Oy McVey
By Jason Vest
WASHINGTON, D.C. - At a moment when the popular mind-set
once again links the words "Arab" and "Islamic" with all things
retrograde and threatening - including terrorism (cue the new Charlie
Daniels anthem and revel in the poetry: "This ain't no rag, it's a
flag/And we don't wear it on our heads. . . . /We're gonna hunt you
down like a mad dog hound") - it came as a surprise to some that the
latest malefactors accorded POW status in the "War on Terrorism"
turned out to be Jewish.
Arrested and charged last week with intriguing to do explosive
little actions on a Culver City, California, mosque and the offices
of Lebanese American U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, Jewish Defense
League chief Irving David Rubin and JDL member Earl Leslie Krugel
were, according to FBI wiretap transcripts, anything but circumspect
about their devices and desires: Though Rubin lamented the wanting
state of technology in the JDL's possession (not good enough to "blow
up an entire building"), Krugel was adamant that "Arabs need a
wake-up call" and that the JDL needs to do something to one of their
"filthy mosques" - which may explain the five pounds of gunpowder and
pipe-bomb matériel found at his house.
"If the people responsible for September 11 are the quintessence
of evil genius, these guys are at the Keystone Kops end of the
spectrum," says Hussein Ibish, communications director for the
American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. "The only reassuring
thing about them is their absolute ineptitude and the fact that they
were arrested."
Mainstream Jewish groups were quick to condemn the JDL as well:
Characterizing the activities of the organization - founded in 1968
by Brooklyn's own, now deceased Rabbi Meir Kahane - as
"contemptible," the Anti-Defamation League's regional director issued
a statement "abhor[ing] and condemn[ing] the
potential terrorist plot." The American Jewish Committee said it
"categorically condemns in the strongest possible terms the alleged
JDL plot," and went so far as to follow up with a personal letter to
Republican representative Issa, decrying "such wanton lawlessness,"
which is "so clearly contrary to the fundamental tenets of our faith,
and to the basic principles of justice and liberty that brought our
parents and grandparents to America's shores and that form the
bedrock of our national values."
Yet some observers of the current Middle East crisis see more than
a bit of disingenuousness and historical irony here. While both the
ADL and the AJC have condemned the JDL, they've unequivocally backed
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's indiscriminate use of force
against the Palestinians and the cutting of ties with Palestinian
Authority president Yasir Arafat - neither of which is universally
seen as a particularly constructive way to slow the cycles of
violence across Israel and the Occupied Territories.
But what's even more vexing to others is the apparent inability or
unwillingness to discern similarities between the current Palestinian
milieu and Israeli operations of 50-plus years ago, which secured
statehood from colonialist occupiers - as well as similarities
between violent, internecine struggles among disparate underground
groups. "It's peculiar, it's paradoxical, that Sharon and Likud
should be the ones who are trying to equate any authentic resistance
in Palestine with some of the terrorist activities, as terrorism in
Israel really started with Begin and Shamir and later Sharon," says
Clovis Maksoud, the former Arab League ambassador to the United
Nations. "It's a very valid question as to why they see no
similarities between themselves under the British and the
Palestinians under their occupation." Especially, he adds, as the
Israeli government supports museums that honor assassins and
terrorists - including one located on a street named for a
terrorist.
The thoroughfare in question runs between Florentine and
Emeq-Yisrael, and bears the name Stern Street - in honor of Avraham
Stern, a 1920s Zionist and charter member of the Haganah, then a
loose-knit Jewish militia organized as a self-defense mechanism
against Arab violence. Finding the Haganah insufficiently proactive
in realizing the goal of a Jewish state that would encompass "both
sides of the River Jordan," erstwhile Mussolini follower and
early-day ultra-nationalist Ze'ev Jabotinsky broke with the militia
and formed the Irgun, which devoted itself to terrorist operations
against the British.
Once an enthusiastic Irgunist, Stern was appalled when the Irgun
decided to make common cause with the British against the Nazis, and
created the even more underground and more violent Lehi (Lohamei
Herut Yisrael, or Fighters for the Freedom of Israel), also known as
the Stern Gang, which held there was no greater threat to the Jews of
Palestine than the mandate's British administrators.
To this end, Stern actually made overtures to the Axis powers;
September 1940 found him in dialogue with an emissary from Il Duce in
Jerusalem, and in January 1941 he dispatched an agent to
Vichy-controlled Beirut with instructions to convey a letter to
representatives of the Reich. In it, Stern held that the
"establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and
totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich,
would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future
German position of power in the Near East. Proceeding from these
considerations, [the Lehi] in Palestine, under the condition
[that] the above-mentioned national aspirations of the
Israeli freedom movement are recognized on the side of the German
Reich, offers to actively take part in the war on Germany's
side."
The Germans declined to take Stern up on the offer, but Stern held
out hope as his organization continued to engage in terrorism against
the British. After Stern died in a shoot-out with British police in
1942, his mantle was picked up by future Israeli prime minister
Yitzhak Shamir. Still, the Israeli underground focused on the British
as the greatest of all evils, and on November 6, 1944, Lord Moyne,
the British minister for Middle East affairs, was assassinated in
Cairo by Eliyahu Beit-Tzuri and Eliyahu Hakim—both members of
the Lehi, who were later arrested, convicted, and hanged. After the
state of Israel was established, the Lehi, displeased with what it
considered the too pro-Arab views of the Swedish UN-appointed
mediator for Palestine, assassinated him; on September 17, 1948,
Count Folke Bernadotte - who, as a neutral diplomat in World War II,
had saved thousands of Jews from Nazi death camps - was shot and
killed by Lehi assassins, along with French colonel Andre Serot, the
senior UN military observer, whose wife's life had been saved by
Bernadotte.
The Bernadotte assassination was so outrageous that the nascent
government of David Ben-Gurion had little problem disbanding the Lehi
(though none of the assassins were ever brought to justice). Yet,
despite this history of terror, the Israeli Ministry of Defense
underwrites museums commemorating the Stern Gang and the Irgun -
which, under Menachem Begin, bombed the British headquarters at the
King David Hotel in 1946, leaving 90 dead and 45 wounded (with 15
Jews among the casualties). Like Lehi, it wasn't until 1948 that the
Irgun was forced out of existence, after its arms-transport ship, the
Altalena, was blown up by the provisional Israeli government - a
point analysts like Ibish say bears remembering.
"There are streets named after the assassins of Moyne and
Bernadotte. They are historical figures not disavowed by the rhetoric
of the state of Israel, nor is there any reflection on the fact that
two terrorist leaders later became distinguished leaders of the
republic," Ibish says. "And now people are saying that Arafat must
have his Altalena." Ibish adds that Israel's first prime minister,
David Ben-Gurion, "never moved against the Irgun and the Stern Gang
until after the state was established and secured, which is
definitely not true in the case of the Palestinian Authority.
Essentially, the Israelis are asking the Palestinians to do something
they themselves refused to do."
