On April 16, 1947 saw the British administration in Mandatory Palestine execute Dov Gruner, Mordechai Alkahi, Yehiel Dresner, and Eliezer Kashani, the four members of the Irgun.Mordechai Alkahi was born in Petah Tikvah, Mandatory Palestine, in 1925. A talented athlete, he won first place in a national sports competition in 1941; he joined the Irgun in late 1943, when he was 18 years old. Yehiel Dresner was born in Poland in 1922. He and his family immigrated to Mandatory Palestine and settled in Jerusalem when he was 11 years old. After joining the Zionist Youth Organization Beitar when he was 13,, he, along with his three brothers, joined the Irgun in 1941.Eliezer Kashani was also a native Israeli born in Petah Tikvah. Growing up poor, he made a name for himself as a sportsman in the Maccabi organization. Initially exiled by the British to Eritrea on suspicions of working against British rule, he would return to the mandate to officially join Irgun by 1945. Dov Gruner was born in Hungary in 1912. In 1938, he joined Beitar as part of one of his missions. Gruner and his colleagues posed as British operatives with a truck full of prisoners to gain access to a police station. In fact, everyone involved in the operation was an Irgun activist who attempted to steal weapons from the station’s armory. As the group was escaping, Gruner was shot in the jaw and left behind.Gruner spent many months in the hospital, recovering under guard. By 1947, he was healthy enough to proceed to trial. Rather than pleading guilty or not guilty, he argued that the court did not have the authority to try him. Though the prosecutor even pointed out several factors that would recommend leniency, such as his earlier military service and lingering effects from his jaw injury, the judges sentenced him to death. Though many Jewish officials attempted to negotiate on his behalf for a more lenient sentence, their efforts were denied. 105 days after he was sentenced, Gruner was hanged, even as appeals to save his life continued.On December 29, 1946, Alkahi, Kashani, and Dresner were part of an operation termed “The Night of the Beatings,” in which British officers were abducted and beaten in revenge for a similar punishment British forces had inflicted upon other Irgun fighters earlier. The team also included Avraham Mizrahi and Haim Golevsky. When they came upon a roadblock late at night, British forces opened fire on their car, killing Mizrahi. All the others were taken into custody. On April 16, 1947, the same day that Gruner was to be hanged, and despite repeated efforts by the Jewish community to commute their sentences, the British military hanged Mordechai Alkahi, Eliezer Kashani, and Yehiel Dresner. The deaths of all four were part of a series of executions carried out by British forces in Mandatory Palestine that continued until July of that same year.