Herut
 Herut  (Political party)   | |
|---|---|
| Rooted in Nazism, Fascism and Terrorism |
Herut (Freedom) was a right-wing Israeli political party established in June 1948 by members of the Irgun Zvai Le'umi terrorist gang, famous for its many massacres against Palestinian Arab communities leading up to the Nakba, the catastrophic ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their historic homeland in 1947-48.
In a letter published in the New York Times on 4 December 1948, Albert Einstein, and 26 other Jewish public figures, described the Herut (Freedom) Party as a “political party closely akin in its organisation, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to Nazi and Fascist parties” and warned the American people of the danger posed by Herut and its leader Menachem Begin.
For a letter of this nature to appear a mere few years after the end of World War II and the devastation of the Holocaust is a profound indication of the clear chasm that existed among Jewish intellectuals at the time: the Zionists who supported Israel and its violent birth, and those who took the high moral ground and objected to it.
The latter group – although still in existence – lost the battle. Herut went on to form the core of the Gahal alliance with the Liberal Party in 1965 and later the Likud bloc, which culminated in its 1977 electoral triumph that ended Labour's hegemony and elevated Begin to prime minister. Herut's full institutional merger into the Likud Party took place in 1988. Likud is now the leading party in Israel’s most right-wing government coalition. The Nazi and Fascist-like philosophy of Herut has thus prevailed, and it now engulfs and defines mainstream society in Israel.[1]
