Lehi (Group)

Lehi was an armed underground Zionist group in Mandatory Palestine. Its goal was to forcibly evict the British authorities from Palestine, allowing unrestricted immigration of Jews and the formation of a Jewish state. It was initially called the National Military Organization in Israel. The British called it the Stern Gang, after its founder, Avraham Stern. The smallest and most radical of Mandatory Palestine's three Zionist paramilitary groups (Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi), the group never had more than a few hundred members. Lehi split from the Irgun in 1940 and by 1948 was identified with both religious Zionism (although most members were not Orthodox Jews) and left-wing nationalism (despite most members wanting to remain politically unaligned. Israel granted a general amnesty to Lehi members on 14 February 1949. In 1980 the group was honored by the institution of the Lehi ribbon, a military decoration awarded "for military service towards the establishment of the State of Israel". Future Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir was among its leaders.