Herut

The Herut Party (Herut means freedom in Hebrew) was a right-wing Zionist political party in Israel. Herut was founded by Menachem Begin following Israel's independence in 1948. Herut believed that all of British Mandatory Palestine belonged to the Jews. Herut was opposed to Israel accepting money from West Germany as an apology for the Holocaust. Herut believed security was very important. Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion thought Herut was radical and he compared Menachem Begin and the other members of the Herut party to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Herut's leader Menachem Begin was not a Socialist so he formed an alliance in 1965 with the Liberal Party to create the Liberal-Freedom Bloc known in Hebrew as Gush Herut Liberalim or Gahal. In September 1973, Gahal merged with the Free Centre, the National List and the non-parliamentary Movement for Greater Israel to create the Likud, which was at first an alliance. In 1988 it became a party and Herut dissolved.

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Leader	Menachem Begin (1948–1983) Yitzhak Shamir (1983–1988)
Merged into	Likud
Headquarters	Tel Aviv, Israel
Newspaper	Herut
Ideology	National conservatism Revisionist Zionism
Political position	Right-wing
National affiliation	Gahal (1965–1973) Likud (1973–1988)
Most MKs	28 (1981, 1984)
Election symbol

Herut MKs Uri Zvi Greenberg, Esther Raziel Naor, and Menachem Begin, at the first meeting of the Knesset in Jerusalem

Herut Media

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  An open letter to The New York Times. The letter was signed by over twenty prominent Jewish intellectuals, including Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Zellig Harris, and Sidney Hook.

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  Menachem Begin addressing a mass demonstration against negotiations with Germany in Tel Aviv 1952

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  Party membership card in 1956. Note similar logo as the Irgun

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  Monument in memory of the eight members of Irgun and the two members of Lehi hanged by British authorities between 1938 and 1947. Under Ben-Gurion, public commemoration of fallen Irgun and Lehi militants was strictly refused. Under Levi Eskhol, however, they began to be rehabilitated, indicating a more equal status for Revisionism and Herut.

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  In the 1977 elections, Herut – now as a part of the Likud – finally reached power, and Menachem Begin became Prime Minister