Israel Eldad

Scholar, writer and active Zionist revolutionary Israel Eldad was born in Galicia in 1910. After graduating from the Rabbinical Seminary in Vienna and obtaining his doctorate in philosophy, he returned to Poland to teach Jewish Studies at the Vilna Teachers Seminary. Invited by Menachem Begin, he joined the Warsaw leadership of Brit Trumpeldor Betar the youth section of Jabotinsky s Revisionist Zionist Party. In 1938 he first met Avraham Stern, founder of the underground Zionist movement...See more

Scholar, writer and active Zionist revolutionary Israel Eldad was born in Galicia in 1910. After graduating from the Rabbinical Seminary in Vienna and obtaining his doctorate in philosophy, he returned to Poland to teach Jewish Studies at the Vilna Teachers Seminary. Invited by Menachem Begin, he joined the Warsaw leadership of Brit Trumpeldor Betar the youth section of Jabotinsky s Revisionist Zionist Party. In 1938 he first met Avraham Stern, founder of the underground Zionist movement Lohamei Heirut Israel, The Fighters for the Freedom of Israel Lehi (the Stern Group). Arriving in Palestine in 1941, he joined the underground as a member of Lehi Headquarters Staff. During the crucial years of World War II, when the British Mandatory Government was attempting to appease the Arabs by conducting a policy of repression against Palestine s Jewish community, Eldad made secret broadcasts, wrote articles for underground publications and edited the Wall Newspaper illegal bulletins pasted on the walls at night since compiled in book form as Let the Walls Speak. While attempting to escape arrest by the British police, Eldad suffered a serious back injury. For two years he remained in British prisons, his entire body encased in a cast. Dramatically freed from his military guards by Lehi comrades in 1946, he resumed his work in the underground movement until the establishment of the State of Israel. For many years he was editor of Sulam, a political and literary monthly recognized as th See less