- Yehudah Arazi
Yehuda Arazi (1907-1959), code name "Alon", was a Polish
Jew active in theHaganah paramilitary inPalestine and subsequently theIsraeli Defense Force after the creation of the state ofIsrael . Arazi was born inLvov in 1907. He immigrated with his parents toTel Aviv in 1924, studying in theGymnasia Herzlia . While in Palestine, Arazi joinedHaganah and thePalestine British Police . As a police officer, he was most notably involved as the investigating officer in the 1933 murder ofChaim Arlosoroff . In 1936, Arazi was sent back to Poland to help smuggle war materiel to Palestine. [citebook|title=Commander of the Exodus |author=Yoram Kaniuk |year=2001|publisher=Grove Press| pages=101|id=ISBN 080213808X|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=2aKk4E8Rcc8C&pg=PA101&ots=5UrEvf4MzW&dq=%22Yehudah+Arazi%22&as_brr=3&ei=re--RrH4I4qa6gKpoLyuAQ&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html&sig=i3rYqSecCAYNjzvce3GNjS-HFpU]In 1943 he "confiscated" 5000 rifles from the British Police for the Haganah and had to go into hiding. From 1945 to 1948 he was in the Mossad, commander of Italy “station” and the “La Spacia” affair. [citebook|title=A New Jewry?: America Since the Second World War |author= Peter Medding|year=1992|publisher=Oxford University Press|id=ISBN 0195074491]
After the independence of
Israel in 1948, Arazi became a private businessman and built theRamat-Aviv Hotel . He died in 1959.Arazi and La Spacia affair gave the inspiration to
Leon Uris for Ari Ben Canaan in "Exodus".Arazi was known as “King of Ruses” changing disguises and characters according to needs.References
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