The Bombing of the King David Hotel
The
King David Hotel was the site of the British military command and the
British Criminal Investigation Division. The
Irgun chose it as a target after British troops invaded the Jewish
Agency June 29, 1946, and confiscated large quantities of documents. At
about the same time, more than 2,500 Jews from all over Palestine were
placed under arrest. The information about Jewish Agency operations,
including intelligence activities in Arab countries, was taken to the King
David Hotel.
A week later, news of a massacre of 40 Jews in a pogrom
in
Poland reminded the Jews of Palestine how Britain's restrictive
immigration policy had condemned thousands to death.
Irgun leader
Menachem Begin stressed his desire to avoid civilian casualties and said
three telephone calls were placed, one to the hotel, another to the French
Consulate, and a third to the Palestine Post, warning that explosives in the
King David Hotel would soon be detonated.
On July 22, 1946, the calls were made. The call into the
hotel was apparently received and ignored. Begin quotes one British official
who supposedly refused to evacuate the building, saying: "We don't take
orders from the Jews."1 As a result, when the
bombs exploded, the casualty toll was high: a total of 91 killed and 45
injured. Among the casualties were 15 Jews. Few people in the hotel proper
were injured by the blast.2
In contrast to Arab attacks against Jews, which were
widely hailed as heroic actions, the Jewish National Council denounced the
bombing of the King David.3
For decades the British denied they had been warned. In
1979, however, a member of the British Parliament introduced evidence that
the Irgun had indeed issued the warning. He offered the testimony of a
British officer who heard other officers in the King David Hotel bar joking
about a
Zionist threat to the headquarters. The officer who overheard the
conversation immediately left the hotel and survived.4
Notes
1. Menachem Begin,
The Revolt, (NY: Nash Publishing, 1977), p. 224.
2. J. Bowyer Bell,
Terror Out Of Zion, (NY: St. Martin's Press), p. 172.
3. Anne Sinai and I. Robert Sinai, Israel and the
Arabs: Prelude to the Jewish State, (NY: Facts on File, 1972), p. 83.
4. Benjamin Netanyahu, ed., "International Terrorism:
Challenge And Response," Proceedings of the Jerusalem Conference on
International Terrorism, July 25, 1979, (Jerusalem: The Jonathan Institute,
1980), p. 45. |
