The Mystery of the Minister's Demise: A Forgotten Tale of Israeli Politics

The Year: 1952. The Place: King David Hotel, Jerusalem

It was the first political assassination in the State of Israel, though the media never made a fuss about it. It took 56 years before the truth finally came to light.

Transport Minister David Tzvi Pinkas was found lifeless in room 428 at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. He was only 56 at the time of his death. Next to him were a Bible, books of Mishnah, and a folder of documents from his office. The prevailing opinion to this day is that Pinkas had a heart condition and his heavy workload overcame him. While there may be truth to this theory, his close associates and family firmly believe that the stress that overcame him was primarily due to an event that occurred two months prior at his home.

On the night of Shabbat, the 28th of Sivan, 1952, the Pinkas family was sitting in their living room. At the end of the Shabbat meal, at 9:45 pm, there was a sound of an object falling on the balcony. The two children of the family, Mordechai and Yehudit, went outside and identified a hand grenade that, by some miracle, did not explode. The police were summoned, removed the grenade, and set up an ambush near the apartment. On Saturday night at 1 am, watchful officers spotted two youths entering the building and quickly exiting. They chased and caught them. While searching them, a loud explosion was heard from the direction of the apartment. The house sustained severe damage.

Pinkas was not physically harmed, but the event negatively impacted his mental state. "It was evident on his face," recalled his personal assistant, Attorney Baruch Gross, years later. "He asked me, 'Is this the country we are building, where if a minister makes a decision that a citizen dislikes, he rises and assassinates him?!".

Pinkas, a member of the Mizrachi party, had enemies. In the summer of 1952, he incited the ire of many secular people when he led the fight for religious education for immigrant children in transit camps, comparing the national education system to the Inquisition and a concentration camp. He then further infuriated the secular community when he passed a government regulation requiring drivers to cease operating their vehicles on Shabbat due to a fuel shortage.

Who planted the bomb at Pinkas's home? It didn't take a Sherlock Holmes to solve the mystery. Journalist Amos Kenan, then a popular columnist in the newspaper 'Haaretz,' decided words were insufficient to fight religious coercion. He shared his plan with poet Haim Hepher, who decided not to actively participate in the operation but also not to report it to the authorities. He then contacted a former officer named Shaltiel Ben Yair. They both resolved to throw a grenade at Pinkas's house. They obtained the grenade from former Lehi member Jacob Haruti, who thought they intended to protest the reparations agreement with Germany.

Kenan and Shaltiel were caught near the scene of the explosion but denied involvement. Their alibi evoked broad amusement, but the judges accepted it. Everyone knew Kenan threw the grenade, but no one pursued it. The media showed broad sympathy for his motives. The government hardly dealt with the issue. In most history books, there is no mention of this case. It was erased from public consciousness long before the statute of limitations.

Only when he was already an elderly man, in a book published in 2008, did Kenan admit to the act. But by then, it was irrelevant to anyone. What troubled the deceased's family was the sense of double standards: when violence is directed at the left, it receives enormous resonance and sharp condemnation. When serious violence was directed against a religious minister because he was religious - the issue was met with leniency, as a kind of youthful mischief. Amusing trivia that does not require anyone to learn lessons.