A social media post I encountered stated that Lehi was supposedly the sender of letter bombs to the then-president Harry Truman and other high-ranking officers at the White House during Jewish insurgency in Palestine. Is this true?
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6Welcome Markus. Please add a lint to that reference and a direct quote. We need to assess it for its notability which is a requirement here. On the face of it, a random social media post that no-one believes would seem to fail that test - unless it can be shown to be: not parody; satire and has many positive responses indication that many people believed it.Jiminy Cricket.– Jiminy Cricket.2025-09-22 22:12:23 +00:00Commented Sep 22 at 22:12
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3From Wikipedia: "In 1973, Margaret Truman wrote that letter bombs were also posted to her father, U.S. President Harry S. Truman, in 1947.[85] Former Lehi leader Yellin-Mor admitted that letter bombs had been sent to British targets but denied that any had been sent to Truman.[85][86]" Not an answer, but I think this establishes notability and the sources might give a starting point for research. The cited sources lead to old publications of Ha'aretz that I don't know how to access.user111403– user1114032025-09-23 06:57:40 +00:00Commented Sep 23 at 6:57
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1Those articles from Haaretz are not accessible online, the archive site calls for visiting them in personRsf– Rsf2025-09-23 10:58:07 +00:00Commented Sep 23 at 10:58
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1Could we have notable source for this claim?pinegulf– pinegulf2025-09-24 08:41:42 +00:00Commented Sep 24 at 8:41
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1 Answer
Inconclusive/False:
The claim stems from Truman's daughter memoirs (supposedly) seeing those envelopes, and connecting the friction between Truman and the Zionist movement to her knowledge about the Lehi sending letter bombs to British officials.
There is no other support for the claim, Natan Yalin-Mor, former head of the underground Stern Group1, denies the claim.
In this forum discussion a few colleagues at the Truman Library could not find any confirmation for the existence of the bombs themselves.
Finally the bomb letters mentioned, that were sent to British officials, were never proven to be originated from the Lehi, only speculated
1 - "The Stern Group" was a pejorative name for the Lehi.
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"the bomb letters mentioned" - needs a bit more clarity. Were there in fact letter bombs? Right now it kind of reads like "there were no bombs, and someone else sent them". Or are you referring to the bombs sent to British officials? As far as I know, it's not questioned that those were sent by Lehi, but I may be mistaken on that.user111403– user1114032025-09-23 14:22:08 +00:00Commented Sep 23 at 14:22