The Jewish Underground was an activist vigilante group formed in the early 1980s out of militants in the Gush Emunim movement, and consisted at its height of 25-27 militants, the majority holding key positions in Gush Emunim and settler organizations. Three men created the cell, Menachem Livni, Yehoshua Ben-Shoshan, and Yehuda Etzion, and were soon joined by Yitzhak Ganiram (Akale), Shaul Nir, his brother Barak Nir, and Uzi(ahu) Shar(a)baf (Sharback), rabbi Moshe Levinger's son-in-law. Menachem Livni, an engineering graduate of the Haifa Technion and commander of a reserve battalion of combat engineers, had moved to the Jewish settlement in Hebron in 1970, and in 1977, he had been elected chairman of the Kiryat Arba Council. Yehuda Etzion, a co-founder of the Ofra settlement, had been student of two rabbis, Zvi Yehuda Kook and Yehuda Amital, but was deeply influenced by the writings of Shabtai Ben-Dov, and was dedicated to organizing the destruction of the Dome of the Rock mosque, whilst Livni, a student of Moshe Levinger from Kiryat Arba, was opposed to an attack on the Haram al Sharif and was primarily concerned with mounting actions against Arabs in the Palestinian territories.