Yaakov Banai - Combat Operations

Combat Operations

On his way to Israel he was informed of the internal split within the Irgun and chose to join forces with Abraham Stern (Yair) to help form the Lehi. Once in Israel he was ordered to distance himself from Tel Aviv to avoid the attention of the authorities and he enlisted as a watchman in the Jezreel Valley where he commenced forming a local branch of the Lehi.

In early 1943 he relocated to Haifa where he enlisted members, among whom was Eliahu Hakim (whose alias was Benny). Hakim was later hanged for carrying out the assassination of Lord Moyne in Cairo. In Haifa, Banai received the alias Mazal (meaning "Luck") after he managed to successfully evade capture during a surprise inspection conducted by British detectives. After a shoot-out with British detectives, he moved to Tel Aviv, where he joined the Executive Committee of Lehi. He changed his last name to Banai in order to confuse British detectives who were on the look out for a "Polish Jew".

Banai participated in a long list of combat missions including the preparations and attack on the British high commissioner in Palestine, Sir Harold MacMichael. This attack was claimed to be retaliation for the Struma disaster. He also took part in the assassination of Thomas Wilkin, the head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Jewish Affairs Bureau. Wilkin was assassinated for his involvement in the killing of Abraham Stern. In his memoirs, Banai recalled that the order to assassinate Wilkin came directly from Yitzhak Shamir, the head of Lehi who eventually became the Prime Minister of Israel.

Banai was appointed to head the Lehi’s combat forces which was renamed under him as the "Fighting Brigade". He masterminded and participated in combat operations such as attacks on military units and police, demolition of bridges, an attempt to free jailed prisoners in Jerusalem that was coordinated with the Irgun, the capture of weapons from a military base in Holon and a British military warehouse on HaYarkon Street in Tel Aviv.

Following Shamir’s imprisonment, Banai remained in the underground from where he oversaw all of Lehi’s department’s and branches in Israel. Under his direction, dozens of combat operations were planned and carried out, a portion of them as part of the Jewish Resistance Movement during which the three underground movements (Haganah, Irgun, Lehi) joined forces against the British. During this period, the railyards near the Haifa port were attacked, the Sarona military headquarters (today HaKirya in Tel Aviv) was bombed, Sarafand (today Tzrifin military base) was attacked, the CID offices in Haifa were attacked, airplanes at the Kfar Sirkin air base were destroyed, hospitalized prisoners were freed as were female prisoners from the Petah Tikva police station, and he participated in a bank robbery at the Tel Aviv branch of the Barclays Bank. Banai pioneered the use of explosive vehicles, which were used against the CID offices in Haifa, the Sarona military headquarters and the Jaffa Sarai.