Israel (Scheib) Eldad was born in 1910 in Eastern Galicia. He enrolled for religious studies at the Rabbinical Seminary of Vienna and completed his doctorate on “The Voluntarism of Eduard von Hartmann, based on Schopenhauer” at the University of Vienna. He joined the staff of the Teachers Seminary in Vilna in 1937 and rose in the ranks of the rightist Jewish youth movement “Betar” to the position of regional staff officer. When World War II broke out, Scheib escaped from Warsaw together with Menachem Begin, who became Israel’s Prime minister in 1977. He arrived in Mandatory Palestinein 1941 and joined the Lehi underground movement in opposition to the British authorities. “Eldad ”was one of several aliases Scheib adopted while living underground, and it became the name by which he is remembered. After Lehi founder Avraham Stern was killed by the British, Eldad became one of a triumvirate of Lehi commanders. For the next six years he wrote articles for various underground newspapers, some of which he edited. He also wrote some of the speeches delivered in court by Lehi de-fendants. Eldad was arrested by the British while fleeing a Tel Aviv apartment and was imprisoned in Jerusalem