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Ya’acov Heruti, member of the Stern Gang who was sent to Britain to assassinate Ernest Bevin – obituary

Ya’acov Heruti, who has died aged 95, was a member of the Stern Gang – or, in Hebrew, Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel), a Zionist paramilitary organisation founded by Avraham “Yair” Stern in Mandatory Palestine. The organisation was aimed at expelling the British from Palestine through the use of violence.

Ya’acov Heruti© Provided by The Telegraph

Heruti was head of Lehi’s technical department and specialised in making bombs, operating from a paint factory which produced explosives along with regular paint. In April 1947 one of Heruti’s bombs destroyed a British police post at the Sarona Compound in Tel Aviv, killing four policemen.

That year, aged 20, Heruti was instructed by Lehi’s leadership in Palestine to travel to the UK, set up a cell and prepare to assassinate the Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, who was disliked by the Jews, regarded as pro-Arab and an anti-Semite.

It is now known that the British security services got wind of the plans and, as early as 1946, issued a top-secret internal warning: “Members of the Stern group are now being organised and are under training. It is expected that they will be sent to the United Kingdom to assassinate important members of His Majesty’s Government, particularly Mr Bevin.”

Also on Heruti’s hit list was the former commander of British forces in Palestine, General Evelyn Barker, and Major Roy Farran, who had killed a young Lehi member in Jerusalem.

Heruti arrived in London in October 1947, enrolled to study Law at the University of London, and started recruiting Jews to the cells by approaching the Right-wing Zionist youth movement Betar and the Hebrew Legion group, an association of Jews sympathetic to the paramilitaries in Mandatory Palestine.

As Heruti recalled, “Slowly, slowly – ‘a friend brings a friend’ – we started building up an infrastructure… addresses… a place for storing weapons…”

One of Heruti’s recruits was Eric Graus, who later became a prominent figure in Anglo-Jewry. Graus, Heruti recalled, “had a place where we could receive mail from abroad. And that was how we received explosive materials.”

The explosives were posted by Lehi members based in the US, and arrived in the UK inside the hollowed-out batteries of a radio set.

While pursuing his legal studies, Heruti would spend much time getting to know London in preparations for the operations. For the assassination of Bevin, a conference of foreign ministers in central London was chosen as the venue for the attack. An escape route was planned, and surveillance was carried out by members of the cell. 

Lehi codenamed Bevin “Simon”, so the mission came to be known as “Operation Simon”, and as Heruti recalled: “The plan was to hit him outside the meeting, then escape on foot to Piccadilly Circus.”

However, with preparations complete, Heruti received a message from headquarters in Palestine calling the mission off. The reason for the cancellation was that the Lehi leadership in Palestine had concluded that, with the British forces withdrawing from Palestine (the last British troops would leave on May 14 1948), Bevin’s role was no longer of much importance. 

The main mission cancelled, Heruti’s cell turned its attention to the other two targets – Barker and Farran, and parcel bombs were sent to the addresses of both men. In Barker’s case, the device was defused by police after the general’s wife noticed it had an unusual smell and decided not to open it.

The parcel which was sent to Farran, containing a bomb hidden in a book of Shakespeare was opened by the British officer’s younger brother, Rex, who was killed by the explosion. “A frustrating failure,” Heruti would later comment. “We were looking for the murderer – not his brother.”

With that, the Lehi cell in London was shut down and Heruti returned to Israel via Marseille in May 1948. 

 

Heruti (right) as a Jewish Settlement Police officer with his father Mordechai© Provided by The Telegraph

Ya’acov Heruti was born in Tel Aviv on January 15 1927. His mother, Yehudit, emigrated with her parents from Poland to Palestine in 1923. His father, Mordechai Valker, a lawyer, arrived in Palestine in 1920 and Hebraised his name to Heruti, which means “freedom of Israel”. Ya’acov studied in Herzliya High School, and after graduating, in 1944 he joined the Jewish Settlement Police, which operated under the British in Palestine.

As a young man, Heruti’s political outlook had been shaped by the writings of Lehi’s founder Avraham Stern, who called for fighting the British in Palestine, forcing them out of the country. At first, Heruti considered joining the larger Right-wing paramilitary group Irgun, but concluded that the Irgun was not radical enough and that its actions against the British in Palestine would not force them out.

“The Irgun at that time didn’t attack British soldiers – only property,” he recalled. “Lehi did. British soldiers, on condition that they were soldiers – yes. In Lehi they said ‘à la guerre comme à la guerre’ [war is war], and in war, all means are permitted.”

In Lehi, Heruti was given the alias “Drori”, and as his superiors identified the new recruit’s technical talents, they sent him to the organisation’s “technical department” where he was told to prepare explosives.

“I’d always been good at chemistry”, he recalled, “so I went straight to the Chemists’ Association, and I asked for a book on explosives … The first book I got was called Qualities of Explosive Material, and I learnt the difference between good and bad explosives. Dynamite, for example, explodes if you shoot at it. TNT doesn’t.”

Heruti subsequently became head of Lehi’s technical department, and it grew fast under him. “I was responsible for preparing the explosives for Lehi... We went from preparing it in a bucket on a roof to something on a larger scale – semi-industrial. When I left the job, we were able to produce something like eight kilos of explosive material.”

After returning to Israel from the UK in 1948, Heruti joined Israeli forces fighting mainly against the Jordanians in Israel’s War of Independence. During this time, the Lehi, along with other paramilitary organisations which had operated under the British Mandate, was dissolved.

In the winter of 1952, Heruti led a small militant group made of former Lehi members called Kingdom of Israel, which, on February 9 1953, put a 15kg device in the Soviet Embassy in Tel Aviv as a protest against Soviet anti-Semitism. Three people were injured by the bomb, including the Soviet ambassador’s wife. In response, the Soviet Union cut off diplomatic relations with Israel.

In May 1953, Heruti was sentenced to a 10-year term for these activities but was pardoned in 1955. He studied law in prison, qualifying as a lawyer in 1956. 

After the 1967 War, Heruti became involved in politics and settlement activity, participating in the founding of two Right-wing political parties and using his legal expertise to assist settlers in purchasing land in the occupied West Bank.

His views were always controversial and included support for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel proper and the eventual establishment of a Jewish state from the Euphrates to the Nile.

Heruti married twice. He is survived by a son from his first marriage and six children from his second marriage.

Ya’acov Heruti, born January 15 1927, died July 28 2022 

Reference: Telegraph Obituaries