90-year-old live grenade discovered in Tel Aviv museum

Police sappers on Thursday morning confiscated a live, 90-year-old grenade discovered in a Tel Aviv museum.

Police were called to the Haganah museum on Rothschild Boulevard after what appeared to be an aging grenade was located in a cupboard.

Police officers cleared the area and discovered the rare explosives, which were estimated to have been manufactured in the 1920s in a private arms factory for use by the Jewish Underground.

Since the find was extremely old and liable to detonate, sappers very carefully removed it from the museum. After the grenade has been defused, it will be returned to the museum for display in an exhibit on the history of the Jewish Underground and the types of arms they used when fighting to establish the Jewish state.

The museum is housed in a building that belonged to Eliyahu Golomb – one of the founding members of the Haganah. In addition to the museum, the site also features preserved rooms from Golomb’s home.

In March, police were tipped off to the presence of an old grenade, flares and 5.56 mm and 9 mm bullets in a dumpster in the southern city of Eilat. Some military bandages, a helmet, and army equipment was also found. The stash was thought to date back to the 1956 Sinai campaign.