Moshe Barazani was born in Iraqi Kurdistan on June 20 1928. At the age of 6, his family returned to
Palestine and made their home in the Old City of Jerusalem. At an early age, Moshe became an apprentice carpenter but later left this job to work in a soft drinks factory. He joined Lehi while still very young, first putting up posters as a member of the youth division and then later as a fighter as part of Lehi’s combat unit.
On March 9 1947, Barazani was arrested in Jerusalem with a grenade in his pocket. At his 90 minute trial on March 17, Barazani sat with a scull cap on his head and read from the Bible during the entire tribunal. His only statement to the court was: “The Hebrew nation sees in you an enemy, a foreign regime in its homeland. We, the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, are fighting you to free the homeland. In this war I have fallen your prisoner and you do not have the right to judge me. With hangings you will not frighten us, and to destroy us you will not succeed! My people, and all peoples oppressed by you, will fight your empire until its destruction.”
While awaiting the gallows in the Jerusalem central prison, Barazani shared a cell with Meir Feinstein, a young Irgun fighter also on death row. The two became close friends and together decided that rather than allow themselves to be executed in Jerusalem (no Jew had been executed by a foreign ruler in Jerusalem since the time of Roman occupation nearly 2,000 years earlier), they would emulate the Biblical hero Samson and find a way to die together with their enemies. They had comrades in the underground smuggle a grenade into the prison hidden inside an orange. When the guards would come to take them to the gallows, they planned to blow themselves up together with the British.
The night before their scheduled execution, Rabbi Yaakov Goldman came to comfort the boys. But rather than recite the traditional confession, the rabbi told the fighters that they had nothing to confess as they would be giving their lives for the freedom of Israel. He encouraged them to be strong and praised their heroism. After many hours, the rabbi insisted that he return the following day to witness the execution. The fighters attempted to discourage him from returning but the rabbi was determined to witness the bravery of the condemned boys so that he could tell the Jewish youth of their heroism in the face of death. Feinstein and Barazani had a dilemma. On the one hand, they could not set off the grenade with the rabbi present. On the other hand, they did not want to put the rabbi in a difficult moral position by telling him of their plot. The boys decided to forgo their plan to take the guards with them but they would still prevent the British from desecrating Jerusalem with their hangings.
On Monday April 21 1947, half an hour before the execution would take place, an explosion echoed through the Jerusalem central prison. Meir Feinstein and Moshe Barazani had sang HaTikva and then embraced in their cell. The grenade was held between their hearts. Meir lit a cigarette, with which he ignited the fuse that Moshe held. They fighters died together in their cell. During the entire Jewish revolt to free Palestine from foreign rule, the British would not execute even one Hebrew in Jerusalem.
Moshe Barazani was born in Iraqi Kurdistan on June 20 1928. At the age of 6, his family returned to 