Olei Hagardom
"those who ascended to the gallows") refers to members of the two Jewish Revisionist pre-state underground organisations Irgun and Lehi, most of whom were tried in British Mandate military courts and sentenced to death by hanging.
[2] The language chosen resonates with a positive moral evaluation: olei means 'he who ascends', while gardom (gallows) was a traditional term for Jews martyred in pogroms, the Holocaust and the like.
[3] The British Mandate for Palestine was an instrument of government instituted by the League of Nations for the administration of territories formerly under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.
[2] At the outset of the 1936–1939 Arab revolt, the formal policy expressly reaffirmed by the Yishuv was a dual one, of reinforcing the Haganah, while at the same time exercising restraint (havlagah) by refraining from retaliation and privileging defensive measures such as the fortification of settlements.
[b] Revisionist Zionists apart from Ze’ev Jabotinsky, harshly criticized this tactic of forbearance, and the movement's militant wing the Irgun, under the leadership of David Raziel, broke with self-restraint in July 1937, opting for a policy of ‘massive anti-Arab terrorism’.
[1] Moshe Barazani and Meir Feinstein committed suicide in their prison cell with grenades smuggled to them in a basket of oranges.
[13][14] In addition, Lehi also managed to get the death sentences of 18 of its members commuted at one point after threatening to kill 100 Britons in retaliation.
After Avshalom Haviv, Meir Nakar, and Yaakov Weiss were sentenced to death for their role in the Acre Prison break, the Irgun kidnapped two British Army Intelligence Corps sergeants, Clifford Martin and Mervyn Paice in Netanya.
The Acre Prison where several were incarcerated was converted into a mental health institution, perhaps to insinuate that the Lehi and Irgun militants who died there while challenging the central authority of Zionism, were insane.
One example is Haim Hazaz's In One Noose (1963), whose two protagonists, Meir Halperin (Feinstein) and Eliyahu Mizrahi (Barazani) exemplify the 'eternal Jew, who gives his life for the sanctity of God' and who symbolize the melding of Ashkenazi and Mizrachi identities.
In Ramat Gan, the square in front of the British police station which Dov Gruner was captured while attacking is named Dov Gruner Square and an Olei Hagardom commemoration monument stands which features a statue of a lion cub representing the Yishuv fighting an adult lion representing the British Empire.
