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Shlomo Ben-Yosef
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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 Zvai Leumi. He is most noted for his participation in an April 21, 1938 attack on an Arab bus, specifically 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.
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Encyclopedia
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 Zvai Leumi. He is most noted for his participation in an April 21, 1938 attack on an Arab bus, specifically 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. Precisely for this reason (and for reportedly having been the first Jew executed in Eretz Yisrael since the time of the Romans), Ben-Yosef is revered in the highest terms by right-wing Zionist groups such as Betar, the Irgun and the Jewish Defense League and the Kach movement.
Background
Tabachnik made aliyah to Palestine in 1937. He joined the nationalist Betar village of Rosh Pina and changed his name to Shlomo Ben-Yosef. He worked at the Haifa port to help support his community and later joined the Rosh Pina cell of the Irgun.
April 21, 1938 revenge attack
Although accounts differ in the details, beyond dispute is that Ben-Yosef, along with two Irgun (or variously, Betar) associates, Abraham Shein and Shalom Djuravin, specifically premeditated the attack as a retribution for an earlier attack in which six Jews were killed (among them a young woman who was also raped.)
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.
Notably, Ben-Yosef's attack failed its objectives, in that no Arabs were actually killed. However, 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; in any case Ben-Yosef was arrested, tried, convicted and hanged by the British on June 29 1938. According to Shlaim, as the verdict was announced, Shein and Djuravin 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."
External links
- - profile at the Irgun website
- - profile at betar.org
- - profile at the UK Betarist website
- at the JDL website
- - Letters from Ben-Yosef at Acre Prison
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