Palestine: Also known as “Etzel,” the Irgun was a more proactive and militant Jewish liberation force than the “establishment” Haganah from which it splintered. The Irgun was sometimes referred to initially as Haganah Bet or “Defense B” to mask its independent organizational militant objectives.
Ze’ev Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism, was the Supreme Leader of the organization until his death in 1940. Under the stewardship of Menachem Begin, the Irgun proclaimed a revolt (which was opposed by the Jewish Agency) against the British Mandate government on February 1, 1944.
The militant organization was the predecessor to Israel’s rightist “Herut” (or “Freedom”) Party, which led to today’s “Likud” Party eventually to secure the premiership in 1977 under Menachem Begin’s historic stewardship.
With Nazi Concentration Camps in Europe and the British White Paper limiting immigration to Palestine as backdrops, the Irgun came under pressure from its own “right wing” to become more militant itself. In turn, the “Lechi” group splinters off from the Irgun in 1940.
“Lechi” (with the hard–to–pronounce open “ch” sound) was derogatively referred to by the British as the “Stern Gang” after the name of its founder–leader Abraham Stern, nemesis of both the British and the Jewish establishments.
Lechi was Hebrew acronym for Lohamei Herut Israel or “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel.” On some level resonant with the supra–aggressive Jewish Zealots of First Roman–Jewish War period c. 60–73 CE, this right–wing splinter off of a right–wing splinter (Irgun), Lechi was not the most popular historical Jewish militant group in Jewish history. The group never had more than a few hundred members but it was the bane of the British—and of the Jewish establishment.
Its founder Avraham “Yair” Stern was himself killed by the British in 1942. After being cornered solo in a Tel Aviv apartment hideout and handcuffed by British detectives, he was shot/murdered. The town Kochav Yair (Star of Yair) was founded in 1961 and named in his honor. In 1978 an Israeli postage stamp was issued in his honor, as well, de facto national absolution.
Future premier Yitzhak Shamir (in office October 1986 – July 1992) was a former member of the triumvirate which ran Lechi after Stern’s assassination.