Yaakov Heruti

Yaakov Heruti (Hebrew: יעקב חרותי‎‎, born 1927) is an Israeli lawyer and right-wing activist. He was a member of the pre-state militant group Lehi, during which he built bombs for the organization and in particular, assembled the letter bomb that was sent to Roy Farran while stationed in Britain as an undercover agent. He later became the leader of the group Kingdom of Israel, which bombed the Soviet embassy in Tel Aviv and carried out other acts of political violence in the 1950s, for which he served a two-year prison term. He later became involved in politics and settlement activity, participating in the founding of two right-wing political parties and assisting settlers in purchasing land.

Heruti was born in Tel Aviv to Polish Jewish parents. His father was a supporter of Mapai. After graduating from the Herzliya Gymnasium he joined the Jewish Settlement Police. As an adolescent, Heruti's political outlook had been shaped by the writings of Lehi founder Avraham Stern and the nationalist poetry of Uri Zvi Greenberg, and he joined Lehi soon after becoming a policeman.

Heruti was part of Lehi's technical department and specialized in making bombs. Bell states that he was appointed head of the technical department in 1945. In April 1947, one of his bombs destroyed a British police post at the Sarona Compound, killing four policemen. In 1947 Nathan Yellin-Mor directed him to set up a Lehi cell in the UK. Heruti enrolled at London University law school as a cover and recruited a dozen accomplices from the ranks of right-wing Zionist groups like Betar and the Hebrew Legion. Lehi's leadership instructed Heruti to kill British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, General Evelyn Barker, the former commander of British troops in Palestine, and Roy Farran, a British soldier who had been tried but acquitted for his role in the alleged murder of a teenage Lehi member. The order to kill Bevin was later rescinded. A letter bomb was sent to Barker's home, but his wife saw it as suspicious and called the police. The bomb sent to Farran's home was opened by his younger brother Rex, who was killed. Heruti left the UK in May 1948, and took a ship from France to Israel. He fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, in the Jerusalem area.

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