Avraham Stern

In January 2016, actor Steven Schub played the part of Avraham 'Yair' Stern in the world premiere of historian Zev Golan's play The Ghosts of Mizrachi Bet Street, based on the life of Avraham Stern directed by Leah Stoller and S. Kim Glassman at The Jerusalem Theatre in Israel.

In 1981, the town of Kochav Yair (Yair's Star) was founded and named after Stern's nickname.

The police version was dismissed by Stern's followers and others, who believed that Stern had been shot in cold blood. Edward Hyams puts it laconically "Stern was 'shot while trying to escape'". Morton successfully sued four publishers of books which claimed he murdered Stern, including the English publisher of The Revolt, which settled without consulting the author, Menachem Begin, who wanted to go to court. Lehi tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Morton at least three times. Binyamin Gepner, a former Lehi member who in 1980 interviewed another policeman Stewart who had been present at Stern's death, said that Stewart had effectively admitted Stern was murdered but later refused to repeat it. The policeman whose gun was trained on Stern until Morton arrived, Bernard Stamp, said in a 1986 interview broadcast on Israel Radio, that Morton's account was "hogwash." According to Stamp, Morton pulled Stern from the couch on which he was sitting, "sort of pushed him, spun him around, and Morton shot him." Stamp has been cited saying Stern was killed while unarmed with no chance of escape.

A memorial ceremony attended by Israeli politicians and government officials is held each year at Stern's grave in the Nahalat Yitzhak Cemetery in Givatayim. In 1978, a postage stamp was issued in his honor.

Wanted posters appeared all over the country with a price on Stern's head. Stern wandered from safe house to safe house in Tel Aviv, carrying a collapsible cot in a suitcase. When he ran out of hiding places, he slept in apartment house stairwells. Eventually, he moved into a Tel Aviv apartment rented by Moshe and Tova Svorai, who were members of Lehi. Moshe Svorai was caught by British detectives who raided another apartment, where two Lehi members were shot dead, and Svorai and one other wounded were hospitalized. Stern's Lehi "contact", Hisia Shapiro, thought she might have been followed one morning and stopped bringing messages. On 12 February 1942, she came with one last message, from the Haganah, offering to house Stern for the duration of the war if he would give up his fight against the British. Stern gave Shapiro a letter in reply declining the safe haven and suggesting cooperation between Lehi and the Haganah in fighting the British. A couple of hours later British detectives arrived to search the apartment and discovered Stern hiding there. It was the mother of one of the "Lehi" members who inadvertently led the police to Stern's hiding place in Tel Aviv. Two neighbors were brought to attest to the propriety of the search. After they had left, Tova Svorai was also taken away so that Stern was alone with three armed policemen. Then, in circumstances that remain disputed today, Stern was shot dead.

In January 1941, Stern attempted to make an agreement with the German Nazi authorities, offering to "actively take part in the war on Germany's side" in return for German support for Jewish immigration to Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish state. Another attempt to contact the Germans was made in late 1941, but there is no record of a German response in either case. These appeals to Germany were in direct opposition to the views of other Zionists, such as Ze'ev Jabotinsky, who wanted Britain to defeat the Nazis even as they wanted to expel the British from Palestine.

While under arrest, Stern and the other members of the Irgun argued about what to do during the war. He founded Lehi in August 1940 initially under a different name, it adopted the name Lehi, a Hebrew acronym for Lohamei Herut Israel, meaning Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, in September 1940. The movement was formed after Stern and others split from the Irgun, when the latter adopted the Haganah's policy of supporting the British in their fight against the Nazis.

Stern rejected collaboration with the British, and claimed that only a continuing struggle against them would lead eventually to an independent Jewish state and resolve the Jewish situation in the Diaspora. The British White Paper of 1939 allowed only 75,000 Jews to immigrate to Mandatory Palestine over five years, and no more after that unless local Arabs gave their permission. But actually Stern's opposition to British colonial rule in Palestine was not based on a particular policy; Stern defined the British Mandate as "foreign rule" regardless of their policies and took a radical position against such imperialism even if it were to be benevolent.

Stern's commander and friend Avraham Tehomi quit the Haganah because it was under the authority of the local labor movement and union. Hoping to create an independent army, and also to take a more active and less defensive military position, Tehomi founded the Irgun Zvai Leumi ("National Military Organization" known for short as the "Organization"). Stern joined the Irgun and completed an officer's course in 1932.

Stern spent the rest of the 1930s traveling back and forth to Eastern Europe to organize revolutionary cells in Poland and promote immigration of Jews to Palestine in defiance of British restrictions (this was therefore known as "illegal immigration").

Stern studied at the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. He specialized in Classical languages and literature (Greek and Latin). His first political involvement was to found a student organization called "Hulda", whose regulations stated it was dedicated "solely to the revival of the Hebrew nation in a new state." During the 1929 riots in Palestine, Jewish communities came under attack by local Arabs, and Stern served with the Haganah, doing guard duty on a synagogue rooftop in Jerusalem's Old City.

Stern was born in Suwałki, present-day Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). During the First World War his mother fled the Germans with him and his brother David. They found refuge with her sister in Russia. When he was separated from his mother the 13-year-old Avraham earned his keep by carrying river water in Siberia. Eventually, he stayed with an uncle in St. Petersburg before walking home to Poland. At the age of 18, in 1925, Stern emigrated on his own to Mandatory Palestine.

Avraham Stern (Hebrew: אברהם שטרן, Avraham Shtern), alias Yair (Hebrew: יאיר; December 23, 1907 – February 12, 1942) was one of the leaders of the Jewish paramilitary organization Irgun. In September 1940, he founded a breakaway militant Zionist group named Lehi, called the "Stern Gang" by the British authorities and by the mainstream in the Yishuv Jewish establishment. The group referred to its members as terrorists and admitted to having carried out terrorist attacks.