Beschreibung:

SHLOMO BEN-YOSEF (1913-1938)
SHLOMO BEN-YOSEF (1913-1938) L'Malaat Yemai HaShiva. M'Rosh Pinnah V'Ad Acco . [ For the completion of the seven days of mourning . From Rosh Pinna unto Acre. ] Tel-Aviv: A. Moses, [July 1938]. Small 4° (180 x 127mm) 18pp. Stapled self-wrappers with portrait of Ben-Yosef and his defence laywer on upper wrapper. [With:] Shlomo Ben-Yosef Z'L . Tel-Aviv: A. Moses, [1938]. Small 4° (210 x 143mm) 14pp. Stapled self-wrappers with portrait of Ben-Yosef on upper wrapper (new staples attaching pamphlet onto sheet of modern black card acting as rear wrapper). [With:] Parshat Shlomo Ben-Yosef. [ The incident of Shlomo Ben-Yosef. ] Tel-Aviv: Azriel, [1938]. Small 4° (240 x 168mm). 32pp. Portrait frontispiece, plate of trial photographs, two full-page woodcuts by Arieh Allweil, text-illus. (Lightly browned throughout.) Original stapled buff wrappers, front wrapper with large decorative woodcut by Arieh Allweil of Ben-Yosef in prison (front wrapper chipped and detached, two new staples inserted holding rear wrapper, rear wrapper lightly frayed and abraded). [With:] Irit Tel-Aviv . [ City Notice No. 24 .] Tel-Aviv: 29 June 1938. Lithographic broadside (410 x 300mm), calling for peace and restraint following the execution of Ben-Yosef. (90mm marginal tear just into text with crude and ineffective tape repair, marginal staining and one other marginal closed tear, corners chipped.) Laid down on card. FOUR VERY RARE PIECES OF EPHEMERA RELATING TO THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF SHLOMO BEN-YOSEF. Ben Yosef was born in Poland, where in 1928 he joined the Betar Movement, the youth organisation of Revisionist Zionism. In 1937 he illegally emigrated to Palestine, where he joined the Betar labour movement at Rosh Pinna. In 1938, in the middle of the Arab Rebellion, in response to Arab attacks on Jews near the Rosh Pinna settlement, Ben-Yosef and two other Betarim defied orders and mounted their own attack on an Arab bus. The ambush was a complete failure: the plotters' grenade failed to explode, no damage was caused, and no-one was injured, but the three were arrested, and tried by a military court in Haifa. Charged with violating the emergency regulations prohibiting the carrying of firearms and explosives, all three were found guilty. One accomplice pleaded insanity and was sent to a mental institution, while another, being under the age of 18, had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Ben-Yosef, despite pleas of clemency from around the world, was hanged on 29 June 1938. His death had a profound effect on the Yishuv's relations with the British which promptly deteriorated, and elevated Ben-Yosef to martyr in the eyes of the Revisionists and Irgun. Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, who had always believed that the Jews' best patron and defender was the British, had his faith severely shaken. The Revisionist Party started to circulate handbills and pamphlets in demonstration at the British action; these rarely survive, and the present lot is an exceptional collection.