Shlomo Ben-Yosef

Ben-Yosef, Shein, and Zurabin were put on trial in the Haifa Military Court, charged with offenses under the Emergency (Defence) Regulations. They pleaded not guilty. Shein and Ben-Yosef were found guilty of discharging a firearm and carrying firearms, bombs and ammunition, but not guilty of a third charge of throwing bombs with intention to cause death or injury. Zurabin was found not guilty of all charges on grounds of insanity, and "ordered to be kept in custody as a criminal lunatic until further notice". Shein and Ben-Yosef were sentenced to death by hanging. According to Shlaim, as the verdict was announced, Shein and Zurabin stood up and shouted at the top of their voices: "Long live the Kingdom of Israel on both banks of the Jordan!" Shein's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when his birth certificate fetched from Poland proved he was under 18 years old. He was released in 1946. General Robert Haining, the commander of British forces in Palestine, confirmed Ben-Yosef's death sentence, and an attempt by Ben-Yosef's counsel to secure a stay of execution was unsuccessful.

The British policeman who served as Ben-Yosef's hangman, Inspector E.T. Turton, was fatally wounded in a Lehi bombing in 1942. His legs had to be amputated, and he died a week later.

On March 28, 1938, a car containing 10 Jews was ambushed by Arabs on the Acre-Safad road and six of them were killed. In revenge, Shlomo Ben-Yosef (24), Avraham Shein (17) and Yehoshua "Shalom" Zurabin (19), all of whom were Betar members from Rosh Pina, began planning a revenge attack.

On April 21, 1938, armed with a hand grenade and two guns, Ben-Yosef, Shein, and Zurabin ambushed an Arab bus staged on the Tiberias–Rosh Pina road, a mountain road near Safed. Their plan was to destroy the engine with a hand-grenade; as the bus approached, they shot at it and Ben-Yosef tossed the grenade, which failed to detonate it. The bus drove away.

Ben-Yosef was executed in Acre Prison on June 29, 1938. Due to his execution date falling on Rosh Chodesh, no rabbi was available to give him consolation. While being escorted to the gallows, he sang the Betar anthem. Seconds before he was hanged, he called out "long live the Jewish state! Long live Jabotinsky!" Following his execution, his body was turned over to six Betar members waiting at the prison gates.

In 1937, he decided to emigrate to Mandatory Palestine. After his application for an immigration certificate was rejected, he illegally immigrated to Palestine, arriving on September 20, 1937. There, he joined the Betar labor company at Rosh Pinna - upon arrival there, he burned his Polish passport and changed his name to Shlomo Ben-Yosef. Shortly after arriving at Rosh Pinna, he was accepted into the Irgun. He found a job at the port of Haifa.

The incident occurred at the crest of the 1936–1938 Arab Revolt, and during a high point in tensions between British authorities and the Revisionist Zionist movement. The three perpetrators were soon discovered hiding in a nearby cowshed in the possession of pistols and home-made bombs.

Shlomo Ben-Yosef was born Szalom Tabacznik in Lutsk, in the Volhynian Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in Ukraine) to a religious Polish-speaking Jewish family. He joined the Revisionist Zionist youth movement Betar in 1928, and two years later, he became the family breadwinner after the death of his father.

Shlomo Ben-Yosef (Hebrew: שלמה בן-יוסף; May 7, 1913 - June 29, 1938) was a member of the Revisionist Zionist underground group Irgun. He is most noted for his participation in an April 21, 1938 attack on a bus carrying Arab civilians, intended as a retaliation for an earlier attack by Arabs against Jews, and emblematic as a rejection of the establishment policy of Havlagah, or restraint. For this reason, and especially for having been the first Jew executed by the British authorities during the mandate period, Ben-Yosef became a martyr for the Revisionist cause and is commemorated by the State of Israel as one of 12 Olei Hagardom.