villagevoice.com
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." |
