Shlomo Ben-Yosef (1913-1938), along with Yehoshua “Shalom” Zurabin and Avraham Shein, were members of the Irgun best known for their April 21, 1938 attack on a bus carrying Arab civilians, which they intended as retaliation for an earlier attack by Arabs against Jews. After becoming the first Jew to be executed by the British Mandatory Authority in Eretz Yisrael, Ben-Yosef became a martyr for the Revisionist cause and he is today commemorated by the State of Israel as a martyr and the first of twelve Olei Hagardom (“those who ascended the gallows”).
Born Szalom Tabacznik in Lutsk to a poor, observant Jewish Polish-speaking family, Ben-Yosef attended cheder, but was forced to leave his studies shortly after his bar mitzvah to help support his family, and after his father’s death in 1930, he assumed full responsibility for the family’s support. Nonetheless, he was able to maintain an active leading position in Betar, the Revisionist Zionist youth movement, which he had joined in 1928. When the Polish government gave permission to the Jews to form a military hachshara, he became the first Jew on the drill field to study the “Torah of the gun” and he organized a plugat aliyah (an aliyah platoon) to prepare for aliyah.
Deciding to make aliyah in 1937, he bade farewell to his widowed mother and left penniless with only a small bag and his tefillin. Undeterred by the refusal of the British to issue him an immigration certificate for Eretz Yisrael, he snuck across borders; joined a group of 53 Betar comrades aboard the first “illegal” Betar ship; and alit in Beirut, where he met a Greek fisherman who agreed to transport him to the shores of Eretz Yisrael. Toward the end of the journey, however, the fisherman demanded a fare, and when Ben-Yosef advised that he was dead broke, he was summarily thrown overboard. Undeterred, he swam the remaining stretch of water and finally, after crossing the Galilee hills on foot, he arrived at Naharia. He immediately traveled to Rosh Pina, where he reported to the Plugat Ha-Giyus (the service platoon for Eretz Yisrael), joined the Betar group, and began cultivating the fields of the Galilee. As one of his first acts upon his arrival in Eretz Yisrael on September 20, 1937, he burnt his Polish passport and changed his name to Shlomo Ben-Yosef.
However, working in the open fields proved extremely dangerous for the Jewish workers, as they were forced to deal with repeated shooting and torching of their fields by local Arabs. When the Arab pogroms against the nascent colony worsened and became untenable, Ben-Yosef commenced higher-paid work at the port of Haifa and used his earnings to purchase weapons that he sent back to his fellow settlers at Rosh Pina along with important funds for other purposes.
During 1937-1938, at least 125 Jews of the yishuv were murdered by local Arabs, who were then in open rebellion against the British Mandatory Authority. On March 28, 1938, the Arabs ambushed a car with ten Jewish passengers on the Acre-Safad road, killing six, raping a woman and desecrating her corpse. Less than three weeks later, on April 16, 1938, Arabs fired at a car, five of whose passengers were Hagana members and three of whom were killed – including David Ben Gaon, who had fought with the Betar Company in Rosh Pina and was a close friend of Ben-Yosef.
The Zionist establishment – and its dominant left-wing Mapai party – had been stubbornly continuing its policy of havlaga (restraint), pursuant to which it argued that “eye for an eye” revenge responses would only result in an escalation of the violence and, more importantly, jeopardize the yishuv’s hopes of securing crucial support from Great Britain for a nascent Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael.
But the Revisionists had had enough. On April 21, 1938, at the peak of the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt and during a high point in tensions between British authorities and the Revisionist Zionists, Ben-Yosef, Zurabin, and Shein, armed with a hand grenade and two guns, sought to avenge the murder of the Jews. The plan, which involved the ambush of an Arab bus on the Tiberias-Rosh Pina road, a mountain road near Tzefat, was to destroy the engine with a hand-grenade and then to shoot at the bus. The three Betarists reached their agreed upon spot at 5 a.m. for the ambush, but just as the Arab bus from Tiberias approached at the expected hour of 11 a.m., a taxi with Jews passed and, to avoid even the possibility of injury to the Jewish passengers, the three withheld fire.
Deciding to await the return of the bus from Safed, they sat tight at the ambush spot, suffering in the heat and without food and water, until the bus returned at 1:30 p.m. As the bus approached, Schein fired several shots before his gun jammed and, when Ben-Yosef tossed the grenade, it failed to detonate and the bus, with its 24 Arab passengers, drove away with its passengers unscathed. Though the bus was not hit, it sped off in response to the shooting and alerted the Rosh Pina police station, and the police soon discovered the three young men hiding in a nearby cowshed half a mile away in possession of two pistols, 85 rounds of ammunition, and five home-made bombs. They surrendered without resistance and made voluntary statements to the police before being sent to Acre prison.
The yishuv severely condemned the action; Davar’s editors declared that it was obligatory to “uproot all bacteria of the destructive insanity;” and the Jewish Agency characterized the action by the three Beirarists as a “morally reprehensible attack” that “seriously endangers the entire yishuv, threatens its peace.”
The trial of the “Rosh Pina Three” – the first Jews to stand before a British military court in Eretz Yisrael – commenced on May 24, 1938 before the British Haifa Military Court comprised of three British military officers, Major N. E. H. Sim (presiding officer), Major Hambleton, and Lieutenant W. E. F. Tuffil, serving as judges. Captain Robertson of Scotland was selected to present the prosecution case for the Crown, and Betar leaders hired Canadian-born Philip Joseph and Aharon Hoter-Yishai as their defense counsel. Notwithstanding its firm opposition to the action of the accused, the Jewish Agency quietly provided a substantial contribution for the legal defense.
All three defendants, who were charged with offenses under the Emergency Defense Regulations, pled not guilty. Defense counsel advised Zurabin to plead non compos mentis; advised the baby-faced Shein to argue that, since he was a minor (under age eighteen), he could not be executed for a capital offense; and advised Ben-Yosef to assert an alibi defense, but all three defendants rejected this defense strategy and announced that they prefer to turn the trial into a political platform, at which they would openly proclaim their views. Ben-Yosef told his co-defendants “We are not children in a playpen!… Let them allow us to die in peace!”
Joseph asked the tribunal to order separate trials for the accused, but the court accepted prosecutor Roberston’s claim that the three had acted in a joint conspiracy. Over three and a half days, the prosecution presented its case, which included testimony from the various policemen involved, the Arab driver of the bus, and one of the passengers. Of the three defendants, only Schein could follow the proceedings in English, and simultaneous translations were made into English, Hebrew, Arabic, Yiddish, and German.
In his opening statement on behalf of the defendants, Joseph argued that the prosecution had failed to prove within the required degree of legal certainty that the accused were guilty: No evidence connected Ben-Yosef with the offenses charged, except that he was found in the cowshed; nor had any witness identified Schein with having been at the scene of the crime or with possessing guns or bombs when discovered in the shed; and, while the prosecution had proven that Zurabin had weapons in his pocket when he was apprehended, his past and current record of insanity mandated acquittal. Zurabin’s father, speaking in English, testified regarding lunacy on his wife’s side of the family and about his son’s insanity, a fact corroborated by three specialists who had treated the young man. The Rosh Pina colony doctor testified that Ben-Yosef was cleaning the outside of his house on the day in question, and that he had personally spoken to the accused at the time that shots were heard.
Robertson argued that the bombs discovered near the bus were of the exact type as those found in the shed and that the police had arrived at the shed only 25 minutes after the attack, which precluded the possibility of mistaken arrest. As to Shein’s claim that he was underage, no birth certificate had ever been produced, and as to Zurabin’s lack of legal capacity, his fleeing to the shed after the attack demonstrated both sound mind and premeditation.
The tribunal convicted Ben-Yosef and Shein of discharging a firearm and carrying firearms, bombs and ammunition, but acquitted them of a third charge of throwing bombs with intention to cause death or injury, and it ruled that Zurabin was not guilty of all three charges on the grounds of insanity and ordered him be kept in custody as a criminal lunatic until further orders.
After the verdict was announced, the court asked defense counsel if he wished to make a statement in support of the mitigation of the penalty. Beginning with a plea against imposing capital punishment for Shein, Joseph produced a May 27, 1938 telegram from Poland stating that the underage boy had been born in March 1921 and that the birth certificate had been sent to the tribunal. (The tribunal eventually did receive a birth certificate: a false document produced by Polish Revisionists to save Shein, although he was, indeed, a minor.) He argued passionately that the defendants had not caused any loss of life or injury and, in any event, the attack was the result of the strain of two years of Arab terrorism:
Never since the destruction of the Second Temple had a Jew been executed by order of a court of law in Palestine. There should be no question of political balance in this case: terrorists might revert to terrorism, but not so these youngsters, who worked in Rosh Pina to build up the country. That they might have fired shots on the bus may have saved lives, because the police were admittedly lying in wait expecting an attack on a Jewish bus, which attack did not then take place… If these boys are sentenced to death, it will be too hard a punishment on the Jewish community here and abroad.
Shein’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when his birth certificate, which was retrieved from Poland, proved that he was under 18 (he would later be released from incarceration in 1946). There was hope among the Zionists that Ben-Yosef’s death sentence would be commuted because the attack had not killed anyone; because he was of good character with no previous record; because there was precedent for the British granting a reprieve to a convicted Jews under similar circumstances; and because, in a similar case, an Arab Gazan youth had been found to be of good character and granted a reprieve. However, the British authorities, who had executed some forty Arabs since the Emergency Regulations had gone into effect, wanted to hang Ben-Yosef to demonstrate their “even-handedness.” The military tribunal denied Ben-Yosef’s attempt to secure a stay of execution, and Lieutenant General Robert M. Haining, the commander of British forces in Eretz Yisrael, confirmed Ben-Yosef’s death sentence. In a trembling and faltering voice, the Jewish interpreter read the verdict aloud in Hebrew, whereupon Shein and Zurabin rose and shouted, “Long live the Kingdom of Israel on both banks of the Jordan!”
Over the three and a half weeks following the verdict, the British authorities received numerous appeals for clemency not only from the yishuv and from the Jewish Diaspora, but also from non-Jewish authorities, who took great interest in the case because it was so manifestly obvious that the death sentence was not related to Ben-Yosef’s crime but, rather, to the political advancement of British policy in Eretz Yisrael. These heartfelt appeals came not only from the likes of Chief Rabbis Yaakov Meir and Isaac Halevi Herzog of Eretz Yisrael, who appealed for clemency in a letter to King George V on his sixtieth birthday; from the Chief Rabbis of Tel Aviv and Jaffa; from Rabbi Joseph Hertz, the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire; and from Ben-Gurion, then Chairman of the Zionist Executive who had no great affection for the Irgun and Betar (to say the least); but also from the Polish government, which formally sought a clemency request for “Shalom Tabachnik” (a Polish national), two Anglican Bishops, British members of parliament, newspaper editors and columnists, churches, and communities around the world. The British authorities ignored them all, including a pathetic appeal from Ben-Yosef’s mother that her son’s execution be delayed until she could get to Eretz Yisrael to kiss her son for the last time. Jabotinsky’s personal appeal to Britain’s Colonial Secretary, Malcolm McDonald, was also in vain, and Haining, the person with ultimate authority to grant clemency, confirmed the death sentence.
However, determined to promote the image of a fearless Hebrew warrior who is only too happy to sacrifice his life for the sake of his people and his homeland, the “Jewish Nathan Hale” objected to every attempt to gain amnesty on his behalf and he firmly rejected an Irgun plan to release him from prison. Before his death, Ben-Yosef wrote: “I am going to die, and I am not at all sorry, because I am going to die for our country!” The night before his scheduled execution, a group of journalists visited Ben-Yosef in his cell in Acre Prison, where he refused consolation and declared that he was proud to be the first Jew to go to the gallows: “In dying, I shall do my people a greater service than in life. Let the world see that Jews are not afraid to face death.” On the wall of his death cell, he etched out “to die or to conquer the height” and “death compared with one’s country is nothing.”
One day prior to his execution, he wrote several letters and notes, including a letter to his mother, in Poland, to whom he wrote, “You should be proud of me because I am not going to die like a humiliated exile Jew.” He wrote to Jabotinsky, “It is a great honor to let you know that tomorrow I go to fulfill my last sacred duty, as a soldier of Betar in Eretz Yisrael…” In other notes, he recorded various slogans and ideas: “I was a Betar servant until my last day;” “What is a homeland? It is worth living for, fight for, and die for;” “Tel-Hai friends! Do not be scared, I shall die like a Betarist with the name of Ze’ev Jabotinsky on my lips.” The note exhibited here is one of this group which was written the night prior to his execution. Reuven Hazan, the only Jewish officer in the Acre prison, was on duty the night of Ben-Yosef’s execution, and who, hoping to comfort the boy, was stunned when he arrived at the death row cell to see Shlomo sleeping with a smile on his lips.
In the morning, Ben-Yosef agreed to a Jewish prison official’s suggestion that reciting Psalms together would suffice in place of the traditional Jewish confession, since the authorities had refused to permit a rabbi to enter the prison for this purpose. Prison officials also rejected his request to bid farewell to Schein and Zurabin, as well as his wish to wear the Betar uniform, claiming that such “military” attire was forbidden, notwithstanding their previous promise to let him go to the gallows wearing his Betar uniform. Finally, he agreed to go without it after the British gave him permission to apologize to his former Betar comrades for not wearing it to his hanging. When, walking to the site of his execution, he heard the terrified shrieks of an Arab murderer about to be hanged, he remarked calmly to his escorting guards that “It appears that we will even have to teach them how to die.”
Ben-Yosef loudly and proudly sang the Hatikvah on the way to the gallows and he climbed the scaffold while fervently singing Shir Betar (the “Song of Betar”): Lamut o lichbosh et ha’har (“to die or conquer the hill”). His last words were “I die with the name of Jabotinsky on my lips, sacrificing my life in the hope that the Jewish nation may learn the lesson that Havlaga, self-restraint, is fatal.” He was hanged in Acre Prison on June 29, 1938. Under heavy British guard, six Betarim escorted Ben-Yosef’s lifeless body to Rosh Pina and, for several hours, people came to the synagogue to pay their respects. A cavity was dug in the hard rock of the nearby cemetery for his internment, after which eulogists linked Ben-Yosef to Trumpeldor and pledged that masses of Jewish youth would live up to his example in fighting for a Jewish state.
Ben-Yosef’s execution provoked outrage and mourning across the yishuv and throughout Zionist communities worldwide. In every country with large Jewish populations, the windows of British consulates were smashed, and Jews everywhere attached a black ribbon to their clothes as a symbol of mourning for the heroic young martyr. Shops were closed in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, black flags were hung from windows, the police broke up a Tel Aviv demonstration against the execution, British authorities imposed curfews, and a police guard was present at Ben-Yosef’s funeral in Rosh Pina. Synagogues throughout Poland were crammed with mourners; tens of thousands of Jews fasted in mourning in response to a plea by the rabbinate; and, in Amsterdam, a stone wrapped in a note protesting the murder of Ben-Yosef was thrown by Dutch Zionists through a window of the British consulate. Ben-Yosef’s mother received cables of condolence from around the world, and Betar promised her a lifetime pension and to secure her immigration to Eretz Yisrael.
The British policeman who served as Ben-Yosef’s hangman, Inspector E.T. Turton, was fatally wounded in a 1942 Lechi bombing; his legs had to be amputated, and he died a week later.
The British had made an example of Ben-Yosef – but not the kind they had intended. His murder had destroyed all Jewish faith in British justice and the Zionist Right increased in strength, placing the gallows legend at the center of Zionist consciousness. Coming to an understanding that Jewish self-defense was their supreme duty, Jewish groups in Eretz Yisrael took up arms in greater numbers and prepared for the eventuality of increased violence. In the wake of Ben-Yosef’s execution, discussions were held for the first time regarding commencing military attacks against the British Mandatory Authority.
Ben-Yosef became a martyr for the Revisionist cause and his hanging changed the face of Zionism, transforming it into a national liberation movement that struggles for its homeland against British foreign rule. Some Orthodox Zionists even connected him to “Mashiach Ben-Yosef” (note the same name), whose death was believed for centuries would usher in the Messianic Age.
In sum, the appearance of a “gallows hero” changed the course of the Zionist movement from one that aimed at constructing the foundations of a future state into a movement of national liberation. Ben-Yosef’s death proved to the British Mandatory Authority, to the leaders of the yishuv, and to Zionists and Jews around the world that there was a new generation of Jews that would not bow or supplicate, but was prepared to defend their lives and the life of their emerging nation with bravery and dignity.
