New book tackles intriguing question of whether the leader of the notorious Stern Gang was really shot 'while trying to escape', Ian Black writes
In the ever-controversial history of Palestine, a special place is reserved for Avraham Stern. The leader of the eponymous "gang" – its Hebrew name meant "Fighters for the Freedom of Israel" – was shot and killed in February 1942 after masterminding a wave of terrorist attacks on British targets with the goal of securing Jewish independence in the holy land. Now a new account of Stern's life, focusing on his violent death, raises fascinating questions – and serves as a vivid reminder of a fateful stage in the development of the world's most intractable conflict.
Patrick Bishop, author of several acclaimed military histories, has skillfully re-created a drama that pitted the charismatic, Polish-born Stern against the British detective Geoffrey Morton, who tracked down his quarry to what was supposed to be a safe house in Tel Aviv - thus the "reckoning" of the book's title.
Morton had risen through the ranks of the Palestine Police from humble origins. He was a loyal servant of an imperial power "holding the ring" - with considerable brutality especially in the second half of the 1930s - in a confrontation its own policies had done much to create. He insisted from the start that he shot Stern while the prisoner was trying to get away, arguing "justifiable homicide." Eyewitness testimony and circumstantial evidence contradicts this. Bishop has done some smart sleuthing, aided by the lucky discovery of Morton's private papers. These record a life-long determination to defend his reputation and see off his detractors, if necessary in court. (He declined to respond to my questions when I contacted him some years ago). The book strongly suggests, but does not quite prove, that he in fact killed Stern in cold blood.
Stern was certainly an extreme figure: his underground nom de guerre was Yair - homage to the leader of the first century Jewish Zealots who killed themselves rather than surrender to the Romans. His violence put him at odds with the mainstream Zionist movement and its Haganah militia at a time of great peril both for the British empire and the Jews of Europe as the Nazi extermination machine cranked into action. Stern's men planted bombs, robbed banks and killed British officials as well as Jews and Arabs. They saw themselves as anti-colonial rebels.
This ignored the crucial fact that without the fateful promise of the Balfour declaration and the British mandate to implement it in the face of Arab opposition, there would have been no Jewish national home in Palestine. Still, anti-British feeling was fuelled by draconian restrictions on Jewish immigration and land sales that had been imposed on the eve of the second world war.
The Stern gang and the like-minded but larger Irgun, led by Menachem Begin, found it easy to recruit. The British saw Stern as a potential Quisling who was ready to do deals with the Italians and even the Germans. When Morton gunned him down Rommel was advancing on Egypt and threatening to break through into Palestine, where Britain's suppression of the Arab rebellion had created sympathy for its enemies.
The Reckoning is a good story but it needs no embellishment. I would quibble with the book's subtitle: "how the killing of one man changed the fate of the promised land." Stern's death changed very little. The group carried on fighting the British ruthlessly and effectively: two Sternists assassinated Lord Moyne, Churchill's minister for the Middle East, in Cairo in 1944. In 1948 the group took part in the infamous Deir Yassin massacre, an important trigger for the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, the centrepiece of the "nakbah." It also assassinated the UN mediator, Count Bernadotte. Stern's martyrdom still inspired his followers many years later.
But as the Israelis would discover when fighting the Palestinians, determined terrorists/freedom fighters often grow another head when one is lopped off. The group was disbanded after the creation of Israel but another of its leaders, Yitzhak Shamir, followed the Irgun's Begin to become prime minister in the 1990s. Stern's analysis, at the the end of the day, was correct: if the Jews were to have their independent state in Palestine, the Arabs would have to be defeated - and the British would have to go.
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