Eliyahu Bet-Zuri was born in 1922 to a poor Tel Aviv family that had lived in
Palestine for many generations. In 1931, Eliyahu’s father was made postmaster of the half-Jewish, half-Arab city of
Tiberius. Eliyahu loved Tiberius. The ancient
Galilee region was laid out before him and he eagerly devoured the history of his country. He knew that
Israel had been subjugated by foreign powers in the past and that his ancestors had frequently rebelled to win their freedom. That the nation of
Israel should once again revolt against an occupier seemed only natural to Eliyahu. By the time he was ten, he had smuggled ammunition for the
Haganah militia in order to help it better defend Jewish villages. The British, insisting that law and order was their concern, refused to allow a Hebrew militia to exist and anyone caught with ammunition was sent to prison. By the time he was twelve, Eliyahu Bet-Zuri had learnt to hate the British and these feelings were only intensified by the arrival of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany.
Shortly after Eliyahu’s thirteenth birthday, his father was reassigned back to Tel Aviv. Two years later, during the winter of 1937, Eliyahu was recruited into the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) – an underground movement fighting to free Palestine from British rule. After only a short time of activity in the Irgun, Eliyahu proved himself as a courageous, intelligent and disciplined soldier. On the day of Shlomo Ben-Yosef’s funeral, Eliyahu – like most Jewish teenagers at the time – attached a black ribbon to his clothes and marched silently through Tel Aviv. The name of the martyr became a call to action among the youth.
When World War II broke out, the Irgun decided to suspend its anti-British activities in order to assist in the war effort against Hitler. Some Irgun leaders, however, maintained that it was the British who were occupying the Jewish homeland and the British who were actively preventing Jews in Europe from being saved. A group of fighters left the organization to form their own group, Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) or Lehi, and continued the struggle to free Palestine from British rule. Eliyahu Bet-Zuri eventually joined Lehi and helped to build the group’s Jerusalem branch.
In 1944, Eliyahu Bet-Zuri and Eliyahu Hakim were sent by Lehi to Cairo with orders to assassinate Lord Moyne – the highest ranking British official in the Middle East. The assassination succeeded but both boys were captured. The Eliyahus then used their trial as a means to draw attention to their struggle for freedom from Great Britain. In fact, Eliyahu Bet-Zuri had been selected for this mission precisely because of his exceptional ability to articulate Lehi’s goals. It was known that if captured, Bet-Zuri would be the best fighter to convey Israel’s struggle for freedom to the world. Impressed with the behavior of two Eliyahus during their trial, Muslim students in Egypt began demonstrating that the Jewish assassins be pardoned. But the British had placed heavy pressure on the Egyptian courts. At their execution, the Eliyahus proudly sang HaTikva and then calmly allowed the hangman to do his job. The hangman, who was so overwhelmed by the composure of the two fighters, later remarked that after twenty years as an executioner, this was the first time that he had felt like a murderer.
Eliyahu Bet-Zuri was born in 1922 to a poor Tel Aviv family that had lived in 