Born Shalom Tabachnick in Lutzk, Poland, he was the son of Yaakov Yosef Tabachnick, a poor laborer. Although as a child he had to go to work to help the family, Shlomo showed great commitment to the Jewish people. After work each day, young Shlomo would attend meetings of Betar (Brit Trumpeldor), the Zionist youth movement. Upon hearing of vicious Arab attacks against Jews in Eretz Yisroel and the hundreds of murders of Jewish men, women and children that were carried out by Arabs (with weapons that had to have been supplied by the British), Shlomo left his family and set out -- without a passport or a penny in his pockets -- to then-Palestine.

Shlomo ended up at the Betar settlement of Rosh Pinah, which was the birthplace of the Irgun. He worked tirelessly, was immersed in the social and cultural life, and became a leader in the community. The steadily increasing number of Arab attacks on Jews was great cause for concern all over the country. British government officials did nothing; the establishment authority, the Jewish Agency, called for restraint; the Irgun called for action. When the Arabs murdered five Jews riding in a taxi on the Acre-Safed road, Ben Yosef and two other Jews, Abraham Shein and Shalom Djuravin, decided to close off the way to Rosh Pinah to unidentified Arabs. At around noon on April 21, 1938, the three young men saw a car filled with Arabs who did not live in the area. The automobile refused to stop and sped toward the Jews, who then fired one shot in the air and threw a fake grenade. The Arabs ran away and reported the incident to the British authorities.

Ben Yosef, Shein and Djuravin gave themselves up a few hours later. The British decided to blow the whole incident out of proportion and indicted the three on terrorism charges. As the British wanted to discourage Jewish immigration, they felt if the Jews were seen as protecting their own against marauding Arabs, then more Jews would come to settle the land of Israel. The establishment community allowed the British to use the three young men as "examples." Whether it was in deference to or in fear of their British rulers, the Jews in power nonetheless did not stand up for the lives of Ben Yosef, Shein and Djuravin. The trial began on May 24 and ended on June 3. The defense attorneys ably refuted the testimony of all prosecution witnesses; in any other set of circumstances, the three defendants would have been found innocent. The outcome, however, was decided well before the trial: Djuravin was sentenced to life in prison; Shlomo Ben Yosef and Abraham Shein were sentenced to be hanged. Upon hearing his fate, Ben Yosef stood up and yelled out, "Long live the Jewish State on both sides of the Jordan!"

The Polish Consul was able to bring forth proof that the Polish-born Shein was a minor at the time of the incident; the commander-in-chief of the British military forces did commute his sentence to life imprisonment. Despite pleas from Jews around the world, the British would not alter the sentence of Ben Yosef. All over the land, demonstrations were organized to protest the first mandated execution of a Jew -- a freedom fighter and a hero -- in the Holy Land after the Diaspora of 2,000 years, but to no avail.

Early on the morning of June 29, Shlomo Ben Yosef marched to the gallows. He yelled out "long live Jabotinsky" and "to die or to take the mountain." As the noose was placed around his neck, he sang "Hatikvah," the Jewish national anthem. The Jewish prisoners in Acre prison -- including Shein and Djuravin -- sang along with him but finished the song by themselves.