Avraham, son of Saadia and Yamman Miriam, was born in Yemen in 1921. He had five brothers and two sisters. The family made aliyah in 1926 and settled in Tel Aviv. Avraham studied in Talmud Torah Mahane Yosef. He joined Beitar as a youth, and in 1937, he was recruited to IZL and participated in all of its operations. When the split occurred, he moved to Lehi. He dedicated all of his time to the underground. For his livelihood, he worked at times as an electrician. The home of his sister in Petah Tikva, Miriam, served as a Lehi base. A storage unit next to the house was used for medications and other materials. In 1942, the British arrested him, and he was kept in the detention facilities in Mizra and Latrun.
Avraham went on to participate in many operations against the British occupation. On the night of 1 November 1945, the first night of the Jewish Resistance Movement, he took part in the operation to blow up and incinerate the Haifa Oil Refinery. With appropriate documentation, Avraham and his comrades, Moshe Bar-Giora (Yisrael), Yaakov Ganor (Dan) and Tzvi Artal (Moshe) entered the premises and hid there, holding explosive devices and electric timers, designed specifically for this operation. When they tried to put together one of the mechanisms in the shelters, something went wrong and an explosion occurred. Bar-Giora was killed at the scene, while Avraham and Yaakov, who were injured, managed to escape with Tzvi. Avraham’s wounds were quite severe, as he lost an eye and a great deal of blood. Nevertheless, despite his injuries and blurred vision, he found supernatural strength to make it back to civilization and receive medical care.
As soon as he had recovered, he returned to operations. By February 25,1946 he was part of the attack on the RAF base at Kfar Syrkin, east of Petah Tikva, where ten Spitfire combat planes were destroyed. He continued to fully participate in underground activities, and on June 17, 1946 he took part in a major operation: attacking the Haifa Railroad Workshops, which served all of the British travel by rail throughout the Middle East. The attack was successful and the factory was destroyed, but when they were retreating by truck, they hit an armored roadblock and came under heavy fire. Avraham and ten of his comrades were killed, while twenty-three were arrested, including four women. Eight of these were wounded. The males were sentenced to die (later commuted to life imprisonment) the females to life imprisonment.
Avraham was an attractive man, in both senses: in body and in soul. He was a man of honor and faith. When World War II ended, he wrote to his friend, who believed their salvation was at hand, and told her: “We have waited in vain for the victory of a foreign nation. Indeed, the truth is clear: a victory which is not our victory — i.e. the resurrection of our nation and the establishment of the state — is no victory at all.”
