Shlomo Ben-Yosef

Shlomo Ben-Yosef (May 7, 1913 in Poland as Shalom Tabachnik – June 29, 1938) was a noted (and controversial) member of the Revisionist Zionist underground Irgun. He is most noted for his participation in an April 21, 1938 attack on a bus carrying Arab civilians, intended as a retaliation for an earlier attack by Arabs against Jews, and emblematic as a rejection of the establishment policy of Havlagah, or restraint. For this reason, and especially for having been the first Jew executed by the British authorities during the mandate period, Ben-Yosef is revered in the highest terms by right-wing Zionist groups such as Betar, Irgun, Jewish Defense League and the Kach movement.

Shalom Tabachnik immigrated to Palestine in 1937. He joined the nationalist Betar movement, living in the village of Rosh Pina and working at the Haifa port. He took the Hebrew name Shlomo Ben-Yosef and later joined the Rosh Pina cell of the paramilitary Zionist organization Irgun.

April 21, 1938 revenge attack

On March 28, 1938, a car containing 10 Jews was ambushed by Arabs on the Acre-Safad road and six of them were killed.[1][2] In revenge, Ben-Yosef (24), Avraham Shein (17) and Yehoshua Zurabin (19), Betar members from Rosh Pina staged an attack on an Arab bus on the Tiberias–Rosh Pina road.[1][3] The Israeli-British historian Avi Shlaim recounts the April 21, 1938 incident as follows:

On 21 April 1938, after several weeks of planning, he and two of his colleagues from the Irgun (Etzel) ambushed an Arab bus at a bend on a mountain road near Safad. They had a hand-grenade, a gun and a pistol. Their plan was to destroy the engine so that the bus would fall off the side of the road and all the passengers would be killed. When the bus approached, they fired at it (not in the air, as Mailer has it) but the grenade lobbed by Ben Yosef did not detonate. The bus with its screaming and terrified passengers drove on.[4]

The incident occurred at the crest of the 1936-1938 Arab Revolt, and during a high point in tensions between British authorities and the Revisionist Zionist movement. The three perpetrators were soon discovered hiding in a nearby cowshed in the possession of pistols and home-made bombs.[5] They were put on trial in the Haifa Military Court, charged with offenses under the Emergency (Defence) Regulations.[6] They pleaded not guilty. Shein and Ben-Yosef were found guilty of discharging a firearm and carrying firearms, bombs and ammunition, but not guilty of a third charge of throwing bombs with intention to cause death or injury.[7] Zurabin was found "not guilty of all three charges on grounds of insanity" and was "ordered to be kept in custody as a criminal lunatic until further notice".[7] Shein and Ben-Yosef were sentenced to death by hanging, but the sentence of Shein was commuted to life imprisonment when his birth certificate fetched from Poland proved he was under 18 years old.[8] Ben-Yosef was hanged in Acre prison on June 29 after many appeals for clemency were declined.[9] Shein was released in 1946.[10]

According to Shlaim, as the verdict was announced, Shein and Zurabin stood up and shouted at the top of their voices: "Long live the Kingdom of Israel on both banks of the Jordan!" In conversations with friends, Ben-Yosef's last words were "Havlagah is fatal."

References

  1. ^ a b Tom Segev. One Palestine, Complete. p. 385. 
  2. ^ Palestine Post, March 29, 1938 and March 31, 1938.
  3. ^ Palestine Post, April 22, 1938.
  4. ^ Avi Shlaim (January 6, 2005). "Bombers not Martyrs". London Review of Books. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n01/letters.html. 
  5. ^ Palestine Post, May 26, 1938
  6. ^ Palestine Post, May 25–June 1, 1938
  7. ^ a b Palestine Post, June 6, 1938
  8. ^ Palestine Post, June 6&8, 1938.
  9. ^ Palestine Post, June 27–30, 1938.
  10. ^ Palestine Post, March 21, 1946.

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