Lawrence Haffner (later Yehuda Avner) was born in Manchester, England in 1928. He was active in the religious Zionist youth movement, Bnei Akiva, and was committed to helping build a Jewish state. In The Prime Ministers, he recalls the anti-Semitism he saw and experienced in Britain, including anti-Semitic rioting in the aftermath of the Sergeants affair. Upon high school graduation, he moved to Jerusalem, then part of British Mandatory Palestine in November 1947.
