Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

384 • LETTER BOMBSa Jewish state there. In 1940, Irgun members differed over the tacticalquestion of observing a truce with Great Britain for the duration of thewar with Germany, which the majority of Irgun believed to be necessarybut that Avraham Stern (1907–1942) and others opposed.The dissidents left Irgun, forming LEHI in 1940 to continue terrorizingBritish forces in Palestine during the war. Stern and his followersincluded among their targets moderate Jews opposed to the useof terrorism, killing at least 15 Jews and even contemplating an attackagainst the Jewish Agency in the event of winning independence. Afterthe death of Stern in 1942, LEHI’s activities stayed in a lull until1944. On 6 November 1944 the group assassinated Lord Moyne, theBritish minister for Middle Eastern affairs, in Cairo. LEHI bombedthe Cairo-Haifa railroad twice, once on 28 February 1948 and againon 31 March 1948, causing the deaths of 28 soldiers and 40 civilians.The same year, LEHI and the Irgun began cooperating in attackingBritish government offices and soldiers in Palestine.In 1945 British authorities broke up most of LEHI, deporting manymembers, while others joined other Jewish paramilitary organizations.LEHI members joined with the Irgun in the 9 April 1948 attack uponthe Arab village of Deir Yassin in which between 100 and 120 villagersperished. On 17 September 1948, LEHI members murdered theSwedish count Folke Bernadotte and the French colonel André Serotin the belief that their work as United Nations mediators would impedethe full establishment of the Jewish state. Among the leaders of LEHIwas Yitzhak Shamir, who later became prime minister of Israel.Although LEHI was originally opposed to the Jewish Agencyprogram for the establishment of a democratic state for the Jewishpeople, preferring its own more authoritarian and nationalisticprogram, and despite the fact that LEHI had attacked, assassinated,or injured members of the Jewish Agency, the Hagannah, and manyJewish civilians, the group was granted a general amnesty on 14 February1949. After reconciling themselves to the new State of Israel,some LEHI veterans formed a political party known as the Fighters’List in 1949. After failing to win seats in the 1951 Knesset elections,this party disbanded itself.LETTER BOMBS. The invention of highly powerful plastic explosivesand miniaturized electrical components have allowed for thedevelopment of letter bombs, which have been used by the Black