How a Zionist armed group helped create the state of Israel | Al Jazeera...

How a Zionist armed group helped create the state of Israel | Al Jazeera World Documentary

Al Jazeera English

14.3M subscribers

Subscribed

2.7K

Share

Al Jazeera is funded in whole or in part by the Qatari government. Wikipedia 

87,641 views  Aug 13, 2024  #Documentary #AlJazeeraWorld #SternGang

Avraham Stern, leader of a Zionist armed group that fought the British in Palestine, aimed to create a Jewish state.

National Jewish hero or radical Zionist paramilitary leader? Avraham Stern was the leader of the Stern Gang, one of the Jewish armed groups that fought the British Mandate in Palestine in the 1930s and early '40s. This film tells his story through his own son and a range of contemporary historians. It presents both pro- and anti-Zionist sides of a controversial narrative - who Stern was, how he set up and ran the Stern Gang and how he led it in fighting the British administration and Palestinians with the ultimate aim of founding a Jewish state. Some historians believe he may have collaborated with the Nazis and accepted money and weapons in a deal that enabled them to ship large numbers of Jews from Germany to Palestine. Whatever the evidence, this is fascinating insight into a major figure in the Jewish movement that led to the creation of Israel.

===

0:02 / 46:52

Transcript

Search in video

[Music]

[Music]

hi welcome am my name I'm waiting for

you come

come my name is y Stern I am the son of Abraham St

Elias the founder and first commander of Lei an underground movement that fought

the British here in Israel during the 1940s he was killed at the age of 34 by

the British In Cold Blood [Music]

murder terrorism is turning into open Revolt in Palestine and British troops and police are up against a tough

proposition with every Arab nationalist any apparently peaceful citizen may be carrying a bomb and to catch a murderer

in an oriental city is like looking for a rabbit in a well organized war abstone

first of all was hero was hero he came as a student from Poland to

the land of Israel in 1925 and was a brilliant student of

liberal arts at the Hebrew University here on Mount scopus he also was a

poet this book is the book of his poems

since he was a poet H this is book with all his poems

the first edition was in 1950 which one is your best poem ER the

best poem is the one that I sang to you Unknown Soldier

because he wrote it he wrote this song in the year

1932 when he was a member of the [Music]

iron he came back to Jerusalem and he showed it to my mother

he sang it to her because he also invented the the music and he asked my mother do you

think that the boys will love this song and she said of course it's a beautiful song come home and she took a notes and

wrote the music and since then the song became the

uh anthem of the underground movement

you want me to sing it yes yeah okay I can at least two lines

[Music]

[Music] uh it's a poem of

a young man During the period of great ideologies and great clashes so it

became a symbol I think a symbol for uh the resistance all kind of resistance during

the 930s and 40s uh to the British mandate and it totally expressed the devotion

for having a free

land in 1929 he decided to join an organization

that that might H protect Jews and the only organization then was the hagana

[Music]

the haana was very careful in its relationship with the British mandate authorities sometimes it rejected the

policies but sometimes they

cooperated he spent some time there but they didn't do much he didn't like what

they're doing there

and a group of zionists within the hagana uh believed that uh Britain is as

much the enemy of Zionism as are the Palestinians uh so if you want to create

the Jewish state in Palestine you don't only have to remove the Palestinians you

have to force the British out side of uh Palestine so the first group that uh uh

came out of the hagana and uh rejected its more careful policies towards the

British uh was Theon led by mahim beIN and

zinski so my father joined the the and there he understood and and he

started to think that his life is going to

change he will have to dedicate his life to fight for

Israel the end of August 1939 just the day before the second World War began the British CID capture

all the heads of Theon in a in a in a department in Tel Aviv and few months

before they captur the the head of Theon David razel and also on the same on the

same day when the the German began the war zinski decided that now

Theon are not going to fight the British until the end of the war

[Music]

andin with some of his friends disagree with the jabotinski decision and they're

going to fight the British so Stan um decided that he's

going to split from Theon and to establish his own group which is called

the the Stan group and if you want to establish group you need three things you need men you need arms and you need

money so they went out robbing banks and because they were not true

professionals people who got killed and there was a great rage from most of the Jewish popul

against them the British authorities here and

mainly the British police in t Aviv they were in panic from the Lei

actions because Lei was killing and wounding many British soldiers British

officers and they thought that if they will kill Stern the underground will die

with him so there was a

hunt it's a simple story two of his soldiers were a

injured and being treated in a Jaffa

hospital and one day the mother of one of the injured came to

visit and she told the other one his name was Moses that she wants to go and visit his

wife but she doesn't know the address and he told her the address in Hebrew

and S his wife in the most naive and probably not the very professional

conduct was giving shelter to stern and when this information was

tracked down by the British intelligence the next thing they would

do was to go and see what's going on there the one that discovered him was a

officer named Thomas wilin H but he didn't shoot he called

his Superior this guy a major Morton and uh and and Morton did the

killing my father was a tied in his

hands but and it was a cold blood murder then they claimed that he tried to run

away or something

that's his last letter this is his last letter written

in the morning of of his death of of the killing he says here in this last

letter that H I'm not one of those who

give themselves up willingly to the police or to the

collaborator with her from right or from left

meaning negative answer I'm not

leaving these the first pictures permitted of Jewish refugees on their way from Cyprus to Palestine there some

of the last 750 of the December quota and not unnaturally the transfer since it's now in the direction of the

promised land is orderly and cheerful

many had suffered great hardships in the past she for instance was evidently once merely a number in Sam Nazi bson today

she has a future Aros Stern is a

romanticist a poet an ideologist and in that sense he

was a very uh truthful figure of that era

Abraham stern was he a terrorist or was he a

misguided dreamer my guess no I think he was a terrorist unlike other zionists

Stern did not lie to himself he didn't say that Palestine was empty but if you

read his early writings he describes the Palestinians as aliens as foreigners he

really believed that the Palestinians were people who did not belong in Palestine and were taking over settling

in a land that belonged only to to the Jews he did not see any attachment

between the Palestinians and [Music]

Palestine he saw himself as a real Anti-Imperialist person so he likened

him himself to the Anti-Imperialist movements in Africa and

India uh and the most bizarre thing is not how he saw the British okay the

British were an Empire but how he saw the Palestinians as part of the British Empire which was totally Distortion of

history of the reality but that was his world he wanted to fight the British in

order to gain independence St in his utter naivity believed he could form an alliance with

Hitler against the British hold on a

second I'll tell you exactly what happened yes he did

think that if he will uh find an agreement with the

Nazis he could save Jews he could he wanted to make an agreement with the Nazis so that the Nazis will send or let

the Jews from Europe come here to Israel and be safe and in in in addition thei

will will help the Germans by fighting the British so he wrote a suggestion and he

sent a a messenger to Beirut in Lebanon

to the German Embassy and the messenger gave this letter and this offer to the

uh German ambassador in in Beirut and that was the end of it h he

never got any answer no reaction no nothing this is

the end the beginning and the end of the coab collaboration with the Nazis it was a very naive way of

thinking because the German never answered

it this naive attempt was never evolved it was never any kind of

cooperation there was some strange uh uh strange dreams of

fighting together their Mutual enemy nothing serious could have come out of

it I'm going to hand you some document that prove

that your dad did cooperate with the Nazi and did he have a knowledge that

the Nazi was treating the Jews very badly in Europe

these are Protocols of an interrogation made by hag

people the main ISU of uh establishment to a young uh man that was

part of the stern people and they asked him what were the

ideas of making some kind of apply to

Germany it was never a c eration that's thoughts

[Music]

one of them was a tortured tortured very strongly F zler

by by the British and I think that under torture he told them whatever they wanted to

hear and the other one Pani is a guy that was in the leadership

of Lei and once the British put on the walls of all the streets in Tel Aviv

pictures of wanted leaders of the my father was they wanted to pay for him 1,000

Sterling which was a huge sum of day he ran to a kibo called Mish not far from

jus M he had friends there and he was hiding there and there he told them

whatever they wanted to hear but there's no no legs to this lie I mean as I told

you the only collaboration was with this Ambassador in in

Beirut came out with nothing and also Stern couldn't know about the

Holocaust because the the van convention where all the

Nazi leadership conferred and decided about the final solution for the Jews was in

the 20th of January 1942 stern was killed on February 12th

1942 three weeks later he was then under hunt he was living in parks in shelters

he didn't know anything about what's going on in in Europe not about the van

convention and not about the extermination of Jews he could

know he definitely knew that Jews already for seven years or eight years

before were under a very racist legal regime that boycotted the

Jewish businesses the Jews were thrown out of uh universities

civil service this was few years after the

cryistal when the Jewish synagogues were burned hundreds of Jews were killed in

pograms he knew very well about this Nazi uh incitement to their own

Society uh I don't think he knew about extermination camps and so on but he

definitely knew that the Nazis were using very cruel anti-semitic means in

order to force the Jews outside of of Germany but you know forcing the Jews

out of Germany from for stern was something that he wanted to happen

anyway AAR and the mainstream Zionist and even their gun realized you had to

wait for the defeat of the Nazis before you could then take on the British it was a question of tactics it

wasn't a question of principle so the idea that you negotiate with the Nazis

of course was acceptable uh 1933 they negotiated Hava the transfer agreement a

trade agreement with Nazis that broke the Jewish boycott of Nazi Germany so

again there was no difference in principle but tactically uh you could see at Stern

uh was again impatient uh he couldn't wait he couldn't see that

sometimes you can't do everything at once in Rome a Nazi flag flies and a

wreath is laid at the Tomb of the Italian Unknown Soldier 500 members of the so-called

Hitler Youth March past in demonstration of the newly established Accord between Germany and Italy and who takes the

salute don't tell me I shall recognize him presently

a significant visit Germany and Italy Nazis and fascist draw together many of the Z leaders not only

Abraham Stern uh went through this famous Maxim my enemy's enemy is my friend and

uh some of them and again not only the stern gang uh were also very nationalist

in a way even muron in still in 36 37 we

quite fascinated by fascism as an

ideology Sten totally disregarded the anti-jewish side of

fascism he he was so uh focused on trying to build an alliance against the

British that uh he was only thinking about this Maxim the enemies of my

enemies my friends so in 1940 he tries to uh first of all to meet uh the

fascists from Italy they made an kind of a of an

agreement which called the the Jerusalem agreement made by the uh thean

Group which said that he's going to be one side and

Italia will be the other side he agreed to recognize the Italian

fases as being The Sovereign power in U most of the region while the Italian

fascist would recognize uh recognize Stern as and the

and lei as the sole Sovereign power in historic Palestine but one of the most

interesting parts of the agreement was that it required the Italian fascists to

use their military power to dissolve what they refer to as the

Jewish diaspora meaning that Stern wanted the

fascist mil military to forcibly remove Jews who were not in Palestine and make

them go to Palestine the problem was that unbeknownst to stern these messages had been

intercepted by his Rivals at at the ergon and for a while he was actually

communicating unbeknownst to him with with the Aron rather than with the

Italian fascist another step by Theon to show that thein was a gangster was a

quizzing was a traitor

I would like to say that the first one to cooperate with the Nazis was haaj

husseini in 1936 much time before World War

[Music] Two was meeting

Hitler U I think for many many many many reasons first of all in knew

that Hitler is fighting against the British and didn't like the British

because they kicked him out of of Palestine from the Jewish point of view

was like like like he was a traitor like that he met Hitler as I see it now he do it from

from his own point of view from his own will was no Arab State and as I said

before it was was not was wasn't only him many people tried to to to meet

Hitler and see what happened with the um with the Vatican was the was the pope

the Shi Jews and Arabs as well so to tell him that it was anti the it was it

was against the um the Jews in in in Palestine I think because it was it was

it was afraid that if we have we will have Jews in Palestine it wasn't it

wasn't be good for the for the Arabs in Palestine nothing to do with the

anti-semitic that was a really great mistake uh absolutely uh but whereas it's

understandable for the Muffy to have taken that position for a so-called Jewish movement to taken it knowing for

well that naist had come to power on an anti-jewish program and what with Hitler

had said that in the event of war the Jews would be annihilated in Europe was utter Madness

it was treason of the first order the British authorities here and

mainly the British police in Tel Aviv thought that once they killed him that's

the end of the terrorist organization called Lei of course they were

[Music] wrong from hia come pictures showing the result of the recent outrage that

shattered the brief lull in Terrorist activity the incident was caused by a man believed by some to be one of the

stern gang this time driving a stolen van full of explosives to quarters where it blew up two British and two Arab

policemen were killed and others are reported missing more than 60 police soldiers and civilians were

injured the three people who took over from him I think they were much more organized than he was and much more

systematic in what they did yes part of what they did was a Revenge but part of

what they did was understanding that actually uh attacking British uh

installation uh assassinating British officers uh intimidating Jews who were

not uh uh uh you know aggressive enough in their hands or what they would call

collaborated with with the British uh was uh a terror campaign that was far

better organized I think under under the the three three people that took over uh

from Stern violent actions that took life both Jews and

British then uh the decision was very strict we must hunt down those people

and if we can't do that ourselves we're going to hand them over the British to deal with I think what is important to

understand in the relationship between Theon and steg uh after 43 is that they see they

have a new enemy not only Britain not only the Palestinians but also the

hagana uh the haana begins a a campaign

of trying to undermine the power of Theon and the uh Stern gang uh the uh in

zionis histography this period is called the Sone uh the French word for the period And also the

hunting period was mainly um done was the by the

A and people from the palm and as far as I know they didn't give so many people

to the British but they they they stopped the the the terror

a

the massacre in Dira on the 9th of April 1948 was actually perpetrated by all

three uh military paramilitary groups or or or gangs but uh Boron was very clever

immediately after the massacre he said it was committed by the iron and the

stern gang and even wrote a letter to King abdalah in Jordan apologizing for

the behavior of the extremist in my own

Army the scene was a harsh action when

you put it in context as part of

[Music]

War but Le has nothing to do with the sin the sin was an action of etel people

[Music]

but we should mention of course darasin was not the only Massacre was not even the worst

[Music] massacre the Zionist themselves

summarized the means by which they expelled the Palestinians so it's a very detailed document that says we used

expulsion we used rumors to frighten the people we used special bombardments to

make people [Music]

afraid this is not just a document that says what we will do this is a document that already says what we have

[Music]

done it the debunks one of the most important Israeli

[Music]

[Music] myth the Israeli miss that many people in the world still accept today is that

in the 15th of May 1948 the Arab world sent its armies to

Palestine to destroy the Jewish state it told the Palestinians to leave and the

Palestinians became refugees because they Arab world started a war on the

15th of May 1948 no what this document shows that

even before one Arab soldiers entered Palestine on the 15th of May 1948 according to the Israeli to the

Zionist um intelligence the Zionist forces expelled hundreds of thousands of

Palestinians the war was used in order to continue the ethnic lensing that

began before the war but I think what is really important here is to understand

that the Arab armies are entering Palestine in order to stop the ethnic

cleansing much more than to destroy the Jewish State meanwhile the United Nations

mediator has reported to the security Council greeted by Mr triver in New York count bernad said and I believe and I

think I have the right to believe that we sooner or later it might be sooner

can get a settlement and stop the war in

Palestine during the second world war the St gang does not see eye to eye

withb and aana and and operates alone

against British uh targets once the war is over the the

three paramilitary groups of Zionism hagana yon and the stern gang create

something they called in Hebrew n Mar the uh Rebellion movement or the Revolt

movement and they start to coordinate actions against Palestinians and against

uh uh the British and uh because the stern gang is not very large in numbers

they operate geographically mainly in two areas in Jerusalem and in

Jaffa it's Prince principal preoccupation was assassinations and the most notorious

assassination of the period the assassination of the UN mediator count

bernot was committed by Lei

operatives berad do was in many ways a hero uh he'd saved far more people than the

desire has had from the concentration camps that's for sure he was appointed

uh a few days after the end of the British mandate the reason why the

UN asked bernadat to negotiate the crisis in Palestine was twofold one was

that he was widely respected as a fair-minded

Peacemaker but the other reason is that he had saved 30,00

Jews from the Nazi extermination camps and therefore the the UN thought that

the the Zionist would would uh respect him would respect what he would

recommend his first uh mission was uh to obtain a truth which he did on the 9th

of June but uh he was more ambitious than than that

when the security Council of the United Nations met in Paris Sir Alexander kadaga its president spoke for the

delegates the um Security Council is met here today under the

shadow of the terrible news from Palestine of the the murder of the

United Nations mediator K banad in a way he was not seen as

favorable for the Zionist cause or for the E young Israeli

cause even though murdering him was not an option by the mainstream Israel it

was not part of this the new Sovereign Israel

his assassination was ordered by y Shamir who is was twice prime minister

of Israel [Music]

[Applause] [Music]

Israel he not [Applause]

Israel the stern gang it starts with trying to be more assertive already in

Europe and defending Jewish communities from anti-semitic attacks and that's

where they become more physical if you want in their uh wish to create a Jew

that is not just a victim of pogroms and anti semitism but one who can defend uh

himself and I think that's that's the part I could I could relate to you know as as a Jew today I can understand it

you don't want to be all the time under attacks of uh Christians in Europe who

Who attack you just because you are a Jew the problem was that they took this

violence that they learned and Stan was very important in this and said well

this experience of violence should now used in order to enhance our take over

of of Palestine the Zionist does not Massacre

innocent people by ideology it's not part of the way people would do harsh

things but not as part of the main ideology the Zionist movement always saw

itself as a civilized movement Zionism claims to speak on

behalf of all Jewish people regardless of whether they agree with them or not

it's a nationalist movement of the most right-wing and racist type so uh Jews

who are not zionists are called selfers ironically I

mean this is what the Nazis called the Germans who are anti-fascist that he literally they

hated themselves because they hated their own race and nation and that's the same idea that Zionism has that if you

are an anti-zionist you hate your race because Zionism considers Jews a race at

the bottom and therefore you hate yourself because the individual uh is

not important compared to the race that you belong to I mean this is the racist philosophy of

course yes Palestine was hijacked and and not only pal Palestine itself

but Jewish identity was hijacked by the Zionist in order to support their

project it may at first seem inexplicable that the same people that

had survived the horrors of the Holocaust might

then dehumanize other people in in Palestine and wipe out one Village after

or another because of people's ethnicity now how do we explain this the Nazi

identity was being systematically transferred by the Zionist from the

Nazis onto the Palestinians this was used in order to

Shield the consciences of people who had survived the camps then were brought to

Palestine as settlers and as we know uh engaged in in this horrific crime

against an ethnicity one need not make any comparisons between the holocost and

what happened in the Palestine in Palestine I think uh to do that is it

misses the point one shouldn't even need to to compare what happened to the uh

under the hands of the Germans to understand that what happened in Palestine was a grotesque crime against

humanity

[Music]

there's a medal that I have received to the Min from the ministry of Defense of

Israel for my father for taking part in the war but it came many many years

after he deserved it this state was created in in blood

and sweat and many victims

but the role of Le is being the first and the most activist and the most

extremist underground that that started the fight against the foreign

occupier the current government behaves as if it's a it's it's a Stern gang

still fighting uh but has all the power that the Stang did not have of a state and

nowadays in Israel we have a small Civil War because half of the Israeli Jewish

Community not because of Any Love of the Palestinians or because they understand how bad the colonialism and occupation

of Israel is but they don't like the St gang ideology of the government so we have now a small Civil War inside the

Jewish Society uh because again there there's

this idea of among some zionists that maybe you can do Zionism without the

stand gang ideology my own understanding is that

you have only two options either you have a state without Zionism or if you have a state with Zionism it will look

like the stern gang Zionist a key reason why the Zionist

wanted a state wasn't simply for the land it was because

statehood speaks from a different Podium than non-state groups in the world as it

is the nation state is the measure of all things therefore the Palestinians had to

be prevented from having EST state so that they did not have the same voice in other

words on May 15th of 1948 what had been Israeli terrorist

people like bean and Shamir all these people they now became whitewashed by the

mentality of the nation state they became Freedom Fighters who maybe they maybe they they acted in excessive ways

before that but this is now a nation state abiding allegedly by international

law and it's a whole different uh different state of mind that the world

looks at them with

we still have to believe as a society as a human society that states which are built on Abraham

st's view of statud will not survive in the end of the day because if they do it

means that moral morality has no place in

humanity uh it's a maybe it's true but that would be a very sad conclusion so

it's a guidelines for how to build a state in an immoral world

[Music]