Herut, Israel

Herut, whose Hebrew name means “freedom,” formed the core of the Israeli Right during the early decades of statehood, when the Labor movement dominated national politics.[1] Its founding constituency included members of the Irgun and veterans of Revisionist Zionism, and its founding leader, Menachem Begin, had been the Irgun’s last commander.[1] The party developed from an organization associated with the pre-state underground into a parliamentary opposition, a participant in national unity governments, and the principal component of an electoral alternative to Labor.[1][5]

The movement’s political identity joined territorial nationalism to economic and civic positions that opposed the prevailing Mapai-led order.[3] It supported private enterprise and opposed socialism, while also advocating social justice and individual freedom.[3] Its program included national health insurance and free schooling, alongside criticism of extensive government intervention in the economy.[4] Herut also opposed the military administration imposed on Arab citizens of Israel under Mandatory emergency regulations.[4]

Herut’s route to national power involved progressively broader alliances rather than an immediate electoral breakthrough on its own.[1] Its partnership with the Liberal Party produced Gahal in 1965, and its participation in Likud subsequently connected it with additional parties and constituencies.[5] Growing support among Jews from Islamic countries and their families helped transform the Right from a comparatively marginal political camp into a competitive alternative to Labor.[1]

Menachem Begin established Herut in 1948 from the political milieu of the Irgun and Revisionist Zionism.[1] Before leading the Irgun, which he joined in 1942, Begin had led Betar, the Revisionist movement’s youth wing.[2] Herut based its ideology on the teachings of Ze’ev Jabotinsky and brought former underground members into the public political institutions of the new state.[4]

On 15 May 1948, the day after Israel declared independence, Begin addressed listeners over the Irgun’s underground radio and announced its departure from underground activity within the new state, except in Jerusalem.[6] He called for unity and supported the new government, declaring: “The Irgun Zvai Leumi is leaving the underground inside the boundaries of the Hebrew independent state.”[6] On 1 June, he signed an agreement with a representative of the provisional government that began the Irgun’s disbandment and integration into the Israel Defense Forces.[6]

The transition from underground organization to parliamentary politics also produced a new public platform for the movement.[7] Herut’s daily newspaper, Ḥerut, began publication on 3 October 1948, ahead of the first parliamentary elections.[7] Begin wanted it to express the movement’s distinctive spirit and give a public voice to members whose previous activities had been clandestine.[7] Its name continued that of an earlier Irgun publication, which had appeared from March 1942 until the underground organization’s dissolution and the party’s establishment.[7]

In the Constituent Assembly election of 25 January 1949, Herut won 14 seats.[8] It received 11.5 percent of the vote, while Mapai won 46 seats and formed a coalition with smaller parties.[5][8] Herut and Mapam, which held 19 seats, remained in opposition.[8] During the campaign, major questions included the place of socialism in the new state and whether to halt or continue the War of Independence.[9] In 1949, the separate Revisionist Party of Israel merged with Herut after its own electoral list failed to cross the qualifying threshold.[4]

Herut contested the first five Knesset elections independently.[4] Its representation fell to eight seats in 1951, then rose to 15 in 1955 and 17 in both 1959 and 1961.[10] The party placed fourth in the First and Second Knessets, but became the second-largest party in 1955 and remained a major opposition force thereafter.[4][10] In 1961 it shared the position of second-largest list with the Liberal Party.[10]

Relations with the dominant governing party were marked by prolonged exclusion from office.[4] David Ben-Gurion refused to consider Herut for inclusion in government, asserting that it was anti-democratic.[4] Begin nevertheless repeatedly argued that a change of government should be achieved through voters’ ballots.[11] His later recollection of “twenty-six years in opposition” captured the movement’s long parliamentary experience before the Right’s eventual victory.[2]

Herut’s opposition to the reparations agreement with West Germany became one of its most prominent early campaigns.[7] Its newspaper published slogans against diplomatic contacts with Germany and editorials condemning reparations.[7] On 7 January 1952, when Knesset deliberations began, Herut organized a demonstration in Jerusalem.[7] Begin called for tax resistance and civil disobedience, warning participants that they might be taken to “torture chambers” and “concentration camps.”[12] The gathering became violent, dozens of police officers were wounded, and the Knesset suspended Begin for three months.[13] The party newspaper defended the demonstrators and condemned the authorities and police for dispersing them.[7]

The party also challenged government policies affecting immigration from North Africa.[7] Its newspaper opposed country-specific immigration quotas, expanded medical examinations, and the exclusion of applicants on grounds such as age or health.[7] During heightened tensions in Morocco in summer 1955, it organized a public mock trial of Mapai in Tel Aviv’s Hatikva neighborhood, a Herut stronghold.[7] These activities accompanied the movement’s growing support among immigrants from Jewish communities in Islamic countries and their families.[1]

Herut’s relationship with organized labor combined criticism with participation.[4] Although highly critical of the Histadrut, it established its own faction within the association in 1963, called Tekhelet-Lavan, or “Blue-White.”[4] David Levy was among the future Likud politicians who emerged from that faction.[4] The party newspaper also intervened in the Lavon Affair of 1960–1961, taking an oppositional stance toward David Ben-Gurion.[7] After Mapai’s central committee removed Pinhas Lavon as Histadrut secretary-general, its 5 February 1961 headline accused the majority of bowing to a “furious god” and offering Lavon as a sacrifice to Ben-Gurion.[7]

In April 1965, Herut and the Liberal Party formed Gahal, the Herut-Liberals Bloc.[7] The alignment was both parliamentary and electoral, but the two parties retained separate organizations and contested the 1965 and 1969 elections together.[5] Gahal won 26 seats in the 1965 election, presenting a substantial challenge to the governing left-wing alignment without defeating it.[10] The partnership brought together Herut’s territorial nationalism and support among lower-income wage earners and new immigrants from Eastern countries with a more moderate Liberal constituency traditionally associated with the middle class.[14] Both components opposed socialism, despite their different social and political profiles.[14]

The alliance also changed the movement’s press arrangements.[7] Financial difficulties in maintaining two daily newspapers led to the closure of Ḥerut and the Liberal newspaper ha-Boqer.[7] A joint daily, ha-Yom, replaced them on 31 December 1965.[7] Politically, Gahal accompanied a movement by Begin and Herut toward more moderate liberal-national positions, while the Liberals sought a partner capable of expanding the influence of center-right constituencies.[1]

On the eve of the Six-Day War in 1967, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol brought former opposition forces, including Herut through Gahal, into a national unity government.[15] The existing governing coalition already held 75 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, so the arrangement extended beyond what was required for a parliamentary majority.[15] Begin became a minister without portfolio.[5] After Eshkol’s death in 1969, former opposition parties continued in the unity arrangement under Golda Meir.[15] In October 1969, six Gahal members entered her government; Gahal held 26 Knesset seats against the Labor bloc’s 56.[5]

Territorial policy ultimately brought that participation to an end.[1] In 1970, Israel accepted the Rogers Plan, which provided a negotiating channel, acceptance of UN Security Council Resolution 242, and a 90-day ceasefire.[15] Begin opposed the territorial withdrawal principle associated with the initiative and led Gahal out of Meir’s government in August.[1] The withdrawal returned the movement to opposition after its first period of participation in national government.[5]

In autumn 1973, Gahal and several smaller center-right parties joined to form Likud.[1] These partners included the Free Center, the State List, and the Movement for Greater Israel, and Begin became the new bloc’s first leader.[14][16] Herut was its senior component.[5] The broader alliance brought together a political network that could challenge Labor more effectively than Herut had been able to do alone.[1]

The decisive breakthrough came in the election of 17 May 1977.[16] Likud received 33.4 percent of the vote and won 43 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, compared with Labor’s 32.[16][5] Begin became prime minister in June, ending the long period of Labor-oriented coalition rule.[2][16] The governing coalition brought Likud together with religious and other parties, including the National Religious Party, the Democratic Movement for Change, and Shlomzion.[16]

Likud retained power in the June 1981 election.[17] Begin resigned in summer 1983 and was succeeded as prime minister by Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir.[17] Herut’s separate organizational existence ended in 1988, when it merged into Likud.[4] The complete merger of Herut and the Liberals was distinct from their earlier cooperation within electoral and parliamentary alliances.[4]

The movement expressed its program in four principles: “for the territorial integrity of the homeland, for the ingathering of exiles, for social justice, for freedom of man.”[3] These principles appeared on the party newspaper’s masthead and linked national objectives with immigration, social policy, and individual liberty.[3] An election poster similarly opposed the British Emergency Regulations and economic monopolies while endorsing individual freedom and social justice.[3]

Before the creation of Gahal, Herut maintained that Israel should encompass both banks of the Jordan River.[4] Its campaign imagery included a map of Greater Israel showing territory on both sides of the river.[3] The party advocated the biblical borders of the Land of Israel and criticized Mapai-led governments for what it considered a defeatist approach toward neighboring states.[3][4] Its territorial nationalism was therefore not confined to objections to a particular diplomatic agreement, but formed a central element of its broader understanding of the Jewish homeland.[1]

In a First Knesset debate over an agreement with Transjordan, Begin argued that the agreement surrendered part of the homeland and risked enabling a British return.[18] Speaking for Herut, he demanded “a free homeland and true independence.”[18] Ben-Gurion responded by characterizing the party’s position as requiring a Jewish state “on both sides of the Jordan.”[18] The exchange placed Herut’s territorial outlook directly within the parliamentary debate over sovereignty, borders, and the meaning of independence.[18]

Herut’s economic platform favored private enterprise rather than socialism.[3] It criticized extensive government economic intervention, yet supported national health insurance and free schooling.[4] Campaign material also attacked Mapai’s austerity policies and shortages.[19] A 1950 poster depicted queues for vegetables, meat, and butter for the sick, and demanded that Mapai leaders and members be placed at the back of the line.[19] Other campaign rhetoric warned against Israel becoming a “branch of the Kremlin.”[19]

On citizenship, Herut and Begin campaigned against the military government imposed on Arab citizens between 1948 and 1966.[20] The campaign attracted political benefits as well as criticism from within the Right and allegations from the Left.[20] A 1959 election poster addressed Arab voters in Arabic and contrasted Mapai’s absence of Arab members with Herut’s declaration that “there is no difference between a Jewish member and an Arab member.”[21] It urged voters to support the party in order to oppose tyranny and corruption and advance justice.[21]

The Six-Day War changed the practical setting in which Herut’s territorial program operated.[22] The Western Wall, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and Jericho became physically accessible to Israelis, bringing places central to Jewish history into immediate public experience.[22] Within the unity government, Begin treated retention of the “Greater Land of Israel” as a central party mission and opposed territorial compromise.[1] The same commitment shaped the decision to leave the government over the Rogers initiative in 1970.[1]

After the October 1973 war, debate within Herut included demands for greater pragmatism over territorial concessions.[1] In January 1977, Begin publicly expressed willingness to withdraw from Sinai and the Golan Heights within a peace agreement, while maintaining categorical opposition to withdrawal from the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[1] He presented the prevention of war as a priority, and his more pragmatic messaging accompanied internal calls for compromise and the approach of an election.[1]

The response to the Camp David Accords demonstrated that Begin’s leadership did not eliminate disagreement within the movement.[1] Only 60 percent of Herut’s Knesset members voted in favor; most of the remainder abstained, while a few opposed the accords.[1] In the party’s central committee, however, a resolution supporting the agreement with Egypt passed by 306 votes to 51.[1] These different voting patterns showed the breadth of support for the agreement within the organization alongside the reservations of a significant portion of its parliamentary representatives.[1]

Herut maintained national conferences every two or three years until 1979 to elect its leadership, hear reports, and determine policy.[4] Internal strife then prevented another conference until 1986; after that meeting dispersed, the movement reconvened the following year.[4] Begin chaired the party from 1948 until 1983, apart from a brief interval after 1966.[4] Other prominent figures included Yohanan Bader, Haim Landau, Shmuel Katz, Ya’akov Meridor, Shmuel Tamir, and Ezer Weizman.[4]

The movement’s wider organizational environment included Betar, the Herut Women’s Alliance, and the National Workers’ Federation.[4] Its newspaper was conceived as a movement-wide undertaking: each member was asked to secure two subscribers, and its founders sought readers beyond existing supporters.[7] Alongside political reporting and analysis, it carried movement news, Betar coverage, and a missing-relatives column.[7] Larger Friday editions included literary and arts material, giving the political daily a broader cultural and communal role.[7]

Herut’s most consequential institutional legacy was its role in creating the political bloc that ended Labor’s prolonged dominance in 1977.[5] From a party of former underground members and Revisionist activists, it became the senior component of Likud and supplied that bloc with its first leader and prime minister.[1][16] The orderly transfer of power after the 1977 election marked an important milestone in Israeli democracy.[16]

The movement’s expansion was closely connected with changes in Israeli society.[1] Support grew among immigrants from Jewish communities in Islamic countries and their families, helping give the Right a broader electoral foundation.[1] Herut was particularly open to young Sephardi leaders in development towns.[23] Immigrants from Afro-Asian countries living in development towns, moshavim, and urban neighborhoods became important supporters of the emerging political majority.[23] That majority brought together Sephardi, religious, and nationalist voters.[23]

One electoral analysis estimated that approximately 70 percent of Sephardi voters supported Likud in 1977.[24] The movement’s social reach therefore extended beyond its original Revisionist and Irgun milieu.[1] Its coalition with the Liberals also joined constituencies with different economic and social backgrounds, including lower-income wage earners and the established middle class.[14] The resulting network made the Zionist Right a plausible governing alternative rather than a permanently isolated parliamentary camp.[1]

Herut’s long experience outside government was another important part of its political legacy.[2] Begin repeatedly insisted that governments should be changed through elections, while the party used parliamentary debate, election campaigns, demonstrations, organized labor activity, and its newspaper to challenge the governing order.[11][4] Its opposition to military administration over Arab citizens also formed part of its record on civic rights.[20] These activities accompanied its forceful territorial nationalism rather than replacing it.[1][4]

The historic organization’s name outlived its merger into Likud.[4] A separate party called Herut Hadasha was established in 1998 under Benny Begin.[4] Benny Begin and two other Likud Knesset members founded the later party near the end of the Fourteenth Knesset.[25] It contested the May 1999 election within the National Unity list alongside Moledet and Tekuma; that list won four seats, after which Benny Begin resigned from the Knesset.[4][25]

In February 2000, Michael Kleiner announced that Herut was leaving the alliance and would operate independently.[4] The later party held one seat in the Fifteenth Knesset but failed to cross the electoral threshold in the election for the Sixteenth.[4][26] Its platform opposed territorial concessions and Palestinian statehood and supported a competitive economy with less government bureaucracy.[26] This later faction was organizationally distinct from the movement established in 1948 and merged into Likud in 1988.[4]

Herut faced severe political accusations from its earliest years.[27] In a 1948 letter to The New York Times, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and other signatories compared its social appeal to that of Nazi and Fascist parties; this was their polemical accusation, not an established characterization of the movement.[27] Ben-Gurion likewise excluded Herut from consideration for government on the grounds that it was anti-democratic.[4] Begin’s election in 1977 briefly disrupted support for Israel among American Jewish organizations, about half of which threatened or implied that they would not engage with the new government.[27]

The Altalena affair remained a particularly charged issue in relations between Begin and Ben-Gurion.[28] The clash surrounding the ship’s sinking in June 1948 killed 16 Irgun members and three IDF soldiers, and wounded many others.[28] Scholarly interpretations differ between accounts emphasizing the prevention of armed political militias and accounts rejecting the allegation that Begin planned a coup.[28] Negotiations without written agreements contributed to conflicting understandings, and one reconstruction concludes that the ship sailed without Begin’s authorization and against his judgment.[28] In January 1959, Begin publicly addressed the affair in a Knesset debate after Ben-Gurion described the ship’s arrival as an attempted putsch.[28]

Historical interpretation also concerns the relationship between ideology and political conduct.[22] Between 1949 and 1967, Herut did not demonstrate for taking territory beyond Israel’s borders despite retaining broader territorial aspirations.[22] Its campaign against military administration brought both praise for its civic commitments and questions about electoral motivation.[20][21] These debates concern the interpretation of the party’s actions, alongside its documented parliamentary, organizational, and electoral record.[20][22]