From: rivk@ellis.uchicago.edu (nora gayle rivkis)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Re: Freedom fighter or Terrorist
Date: 23 Jan 93 23:53:13 GMT
Reply-To: rivk@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago

In article <1jdircINN5mv@manuel.anu.edu.au> bdm@cs.anu.edu.au writes:
>In article 11857@midway.uchicago.edu, rivk@ellis.uchicago.edu (naomi) writes:
>
>>First of all, the correct name is Lechi, Stern having been dead well
>>before the group began. 
>
>This is not true.  The group broke away from the Irgun in 1940 and
>Stern was killed in 1942.  

*A* group broke away from Irgun in 1940. The way I've heard it con-
sistently from people involved, on all sides, was that it was largely
a disorganized and inactive bunch of pseudorevolutionaries who sat about
discussing politics until Stern's death and the imprisonment of many of
their members coalesced them into an action unit. But this is hearsay on
both sides; trying to assess when some individuals who spend a lot of
time together on a given subject become an organization is a lost cause.
I'll concede the point because it isn't relevant. I am willing to call the
PLO and assorted other groups I have problems with by the names they chose
for themselves, despite thinking they have very little to do with Liberation,
not a whole lot to do with Palestine, and not as much Organization as I'd
like to see. I expect the same courtesy. Lechi chose a name and used it;
there is no reason not to take it as standard.

>>Second of all, I at least see them as a bunch
>>of fruitcakes who had one really rather neat idea (buzzing London and
>>dropping leaflets) that never materialized because they couldn't get
>>their act together, and who otherwise did nothing especially useful
>>and very little of any noticeable effect whatsoever... they made a lot
>>of noice and pulled off a prison break and a couple of semi-spectacular
>>assassinations. I am inclined to condemn them more on grounds of idiocy,
>>disorganization, and incompetence than I am on moral grounds, simply be-
>>cause I don't think they were ever competent enough to pull off much of
>>moral significance one way or the other. 
>
>You are forgetting the Deir Yassin massacre.

Deir Yassin was an indication of *competence*?!?!?! Deir Yassin was one
of the stupidest, most messed-up pseudomilitary debacles I've ever heard
of since the Charge of the Light Brigade!! ;-)

Seriously, how much of Deir Yassin was Lechi and how much was Irgun will
never be known; more to the point, how much was deliberate massacre and
how much was a complete bungling that led to chaos and disaster will never
be known. Tragedy it certainly was -- and Israel's responsibility it cer-
tainly was, and I'm not trying to evade it. We're as much to blame for
the results of our mistakes as the results of our malice. But I don't think
it's possible to draw much in the way of coonclusions regarding competence
or intent from it, as there seems to have been precious little of either
present at the time.

>>From a purely moral perspective,
>>though, I will note that even Lechi confined their attacks to the British
>>and local Arab targets directly, 
>
>A particular target of Lehi was the Jewish "collaborator".  Being a
>member of the British police was enough to make one a target (something
>to compare to recent events?) and in a few cases the grounds seem to
>have been even less, such as leaving Lehi to work for the Haganah.
>Also, the Lehi did conduct some overseas operations, such as the
>posting from Europe of letter-bombs to British politicians.

Yup. These were not a particularly nice group of people. But you'll
notice in *every* case you mention, the target was an individual who
had taken, personally, a particular action against Lechi or against
Israel. I will agree that there is a legitimate comparison between the
actions of Lechi with respect to British police and the actions of Hamas
with regard to Nisin Toledano (which does not mean that I support either
one), but there is no comparison between the random bombing of American
and European ships and passenger planes and anything Lechi did.

>>                                 even going so far as to hold kangaroo-
>>court trials for those they assassinated, to judge whether the individual
>>in question deserved it. 
>
>I doubt you would give many points to Hamas if they held "trials"
>for their victims.  In any case, I'm not sure it was a general
>procedure but merely something known of a few special cases.

If you can produce a case where you've evidence it (a) wasn't done and (b)
was definitively a group-decided assassination rather than the action of
an individual without the group's consent (Lechi was not terribly well-
organized or good at keeping rein on their members), I'll listen. But my
point was again, that Lechi targeted *individuals* who had *personally*
done something against them, not three-year-olds from third countries
altogether who happened to be visiting their grandparents in a fourth
country altogether at the wrong moment.

>>This is a far cry from blowing up everyone at
>>random who happens to be on a plane of French origin, travelling from
>>Italy to New York, or what have you.
>
>True, but don't forget the Deir Yassin massacre.
>
>>I will also note that Lechi was the most extreme branch of the Jewish
>>resistance, and the rest condemned them soundly for their acts of terror.
>
>At the time support amongst the general population doesn't seem to have
>been very great.  Certainly there wasn't enough money forthcoming from
>private donors (plus that apparently from Italian intelligence) to eliminate 
>the need for robbing banks.  On the other hand, there was enough support
>to get Lehi leader Yellin-Mor elected to the first Knesset.  My impression
>is that it wasn't until the revisionism of the Begin years that Lehi began
>to be regarded as heros by a significant fraction of the population.

I haven't seen Lechi as regarded particularly well among Israelis... mostly,
they're forgotten and ignored, actually, as having had very little impact.
The Haganah is revered, the Irgun is looked at with a mixture of pride and
nervousness much the way it was at the time, but Lechi is generally not
thought much about. That said, there is enough support in a parliamentary
system to get *anyone*'s first seat elected to the Knesset. This is the
basic problem with the system; you get a whole bunch of crackpots with 
their one representative in there. Getting one person in the Knesset is
about as much of a sign of broad support as getting your name in the news
as a Presidential hopeful is here, and a kid from my college managed to
do that despite being sixteen years under the Constitutional age limit. ;-)

>>Contrast this with the PLO's position as the most mild of the Arab groups,
>>and nobody, anywhere in the Arab world, with an organized movement for
>>restraint from terrorist tactics.
>
>Don't ignore the difficulty in organising such movements in 
>totalitarian regimes.  However, your point is largely valid.

<shrug> I'm not the one who created the totalitarian regimes in the
Arab world. Nor is Israel, despite John's ravings about Mossad inter-
vention in Iraq.

>>	-Naomi
>
>Brendan.

	-Naomi

-- 
Oseh shalom b'imromav, hu ya'aseh shalom, aleinu v'al kol Yisrael.
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast