https://worldisraelnews.com/fighter-for-israels-independence-zionist-activist-and-prominent-geographer-passes-away/
By Atara Beck, World Israel News
One of the last of the Jewish Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (Lehi) and first chairman of Americans for A Safe Israel (AFSI) passed away on Nov. 5.
Dr. Erich Isaac, born in Mainz, Germany, left his birth country with his parents for what was then Mandatory Palestine in 1938. Although he was only nine years old on arrival, he never forgot seeing the countryside on fire as the train took them to Tel Aviv. The conflagration was part of the ongoing 1936 Arab riots.
Isaac grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home. At around the age of his Bar Mitzvah, he became involved in the pre-state, underground Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, or Lehi.
Isaac was so young that he wasn’t allowed to participate fully in one of his first missions — a bank robbery (which is how Lehi raised its money) — and was told he could only be a lookout. (Reminiscing, he said with a smile that, fortunately, no one came.)
Lehi was misunderstood and vilified as a violent gang of thugs during its period of activity. It was referred to negatively as the Stern Gang, named after its founder Avraham “Yair” Stern, who was murdered by the British. The negative attitude toward Lehi persisted even after the modern Jewish state was established. One of its leaders, Israel Eldad — father of Aryeh Eldad, a prominent Israeli medical doctor and politician — was even forbidden by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion from teaching Israeli high schoolers lest he have a bad influence over them.
Over time, Lehi came to be recognized for its contributions, especially once Yitzhak Shamir, one of its leaders, became prime minister in 1983. After that, it won for itself a place in the pantheon of those who fought for the freedom of Israel.
“Once, when we were eating at a Middle Eastern-style restaurant in Jaffa – around 1982 — he walked up to a man,” his son David told World Israel News. “The blood drained from his face when he saw my dad. It was the restaurant owner. He’d been in the same Lehi cell as my dad. My mom, who witnessed this, said that the man was terrified that Dad would reveal that the owner had been in Lehi. Even in the early 1980s, it seems, being a former member of the ‘Stern Gang’ was bad for business…
“Unfortunately, we only know bits and pieces of his time in Lehi. My eldest brother said that once, while walking with Dad in Givatayim [east of Tel Aviv], probably around 1970, he pointed to a wall with bullet holes and said, ‘You see those bullet holes? That’s where I was involved in a gunfight with the British.’”
