In Mount Herzl, Israel’s national cemetery, located in Jerusalem, adjacent to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, there is a dedicated plot where the prime ministers of modern day Israel are buried.
All, but one.
Menachem Begin.
Here’s a little slice of history that sheds light on the reason.
Seventy nine years ago, there were two underground Irgun fighters sentenced to death by the British.
Meir Feinstein was born in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1927. Moshe Barazani was born in Bagdad, Iraq in 1926. His family emigrated to then mandatory Palestine when he was a little boy. They found themselves as cell mates in prison in the Russian Compound in Jerusalem, sentenced to death by hanging.
“Olei Hagardom” is how a group of 12 who were sentenced to “ascend” to the gallows of the British in then mandatory Palestine were called.
Feinstein and Barazani, two 20-year olds, made a pact between themselves. They were not going to go like lambs to the slaughter. As a final act of protest, these two fighters decided they would end their lives together before the British had the chance to hang them.
They managed to have an orange smuggled into their cell. An orange with a grenade embedded inside.
Their plan was to embrace, and press the orange between their chests, and blow themselves up just as the hangman arrived to take them to their execution.
Their plans took a surprise turn when they learned that Rabbi Yaakov Goldman, the chief rabbi of the prison, was planning on accompanying the British hangmen, in order to be there in prayer and support for the prisoners in their final moments.
So as not to endanger him, they requested that the rabbi arrive the previous evening. Rabbi Goldman came. Feinstein and Barazani gave the rabbi their Bible, in which they had written their final messages to their families. They asked the rabbi to leave their cell and instead remain down the hall in his final prayers for them.
Rabbi Goldman acquiesced. From down the hall, he heard Feinstein and Barazani singing “Adom Olam” in prayer.
Meanwhile, Feinstein and Barazani were wrapping their arms around one another, the orange pressed tightly between their two hearts.
As they were embraced in this posture, they set off the orange-grenade, outmaneuvering the hangmen, now dead in their prison cell, as the prison was shaking from the explosion.
When the British ran to break into the cell, they found Feinstein and Barazani ‘s bodies, intertwined. The British were unable to separable the two.
This story never left Menachem Begin.
In 1981, when there were internal tensions — different factions — in Israel, Begin invoked the story of Feinstein and Barazani —how different types of Jews fought for Israel side by side like brothers, and died side by side, as brothers.
This essence of Begin’s speech was more than political commentary, it was the anthem of his life, of his soul.
Begin decided that when his time came, he would forgo being buried alongside the leaders of the nation on Mount Herzl. Instead wanted to be buried on the Mount of Olives, where the other “Ascend the Gallows” fighters are interred, but especially near these two 20-year old fighters, Feinstein and Barazani, who fought and died as one; who symbolized differing Jewish backgrounds, ultimately coalescing into one brotherhood.
Years ago, when I learned of Begin’s departure from the prime ministers’ burial spot and chose the sacred Mount of Olives as his final resting place, I had presumed it was due to the sanctity of the Mount of Olives, the oldest Jewish cemetery in the world, or because of its connection to the prophecy of Zecheriah, who prophecies that the Mount of Olives will be the first place of the future, ultimate redemption.
But it was because of these two Jewish fighters symbolizing bravery and brotherhood, laid to rest among prophets, ancient scholars, holy tzadikkim, Jewish saints and many ordinary Jewish folk through the ages, all buried this holy hill in Jerusalem.
Menachem Begin wanted to rest in peace with Feinstein and Barazani, adjacent to the “Olei Hagardom.”
That is where a prime minister of the modern State of Israel wanted to be buried.
© IJN 2026
