1913 - 1980
Israeli underground leader.
Born Nathan Friedman-Yellin in Grodno, Poland, Yellin-Mor was an activist in the Polish branch of Betar and the Irgun Zvaʾi Leʾumi. He was coeditor, along with Abraham (Yair) Stern, of Di Tat, the Irgun's Polish newspaper. He followed Stern to Palestine and became a major figure in Stern's virulently anti-British underground, Lohamei Herut Yisrael (LEHI: Freedom Fighters of Israel). In December 1941 he attempted to reach neutral Turkey via Syria to negotiate with Nazi representatives for a mass release of Jews from Eastern Europe in exchange for LEHI's cooperation in fighting Britain. Upon his return he was imprisoned by the British but escaped in 1943. After Stern's death, YellinMor became a member of the LEHI triumvirate, along with Israel Eldad and Yitzhak Shamir. In 1949 he was tried and convicted for the September 1948 assassination of United Nations emissary Count Folke Bernadotte, but the sentence was commuted in exchange for an oath to desist from any further violent activities. He led the left-wing faction of both LEHI and its post-statehood political entity, the Fighters Party, and he was elected to the First Knesset (1949 - 1951). In the ensuing years he moved increasingly to the left. He renounced Zionism and advocated a pro-Soviet foreign policy and the creation of a single Arab-Jewish socialist state in all of what had been Mandatory Palestine.
Bibliography
Heller, Joseph. The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics, and Terror,1940 - 1949. Portland, OR; London: Frank Cass, 1995.
— BRYAN DAVES
UPDATED BY PIERRE M. ATLAS
