Moshe Barazani

Who was Moshe Barazani?

Moshe Barazani, also Barzani, was an Iraqi Kurdish Jew and a member of Lehi. He was born in Baghdad to a Jewish family from Northern Iraq that moved to Jerusalem when he was an infant. He joined Lehi at an early age and took part in sabotage operations. He was arrested during a curfew, charged with conspiracy to murder British Brigardier A. P. Davis and sentenced to death by hanging by a British military court on April 21, 1947. However before the execution, he and his comrade Meir Feinstein committed suicide in their cells in the central prison in the Russian Compound in Jerusalem with improvised grenades which had been smuggled inside oranges. The story of Feinstein and Barazani became a celebrated tale in Zionism. Menachem Begin requested in his will that he be buried next to them on the Mount of Olives, which he was. In order to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Barazani's death, a state ceremony was held at the Museum of the Underground Prisoners in Jerusalem in 2007.