1946 Attack on Jerusalem's King David Hotel
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The attack on Jerusalem's King David Hotel July 22, 1946 by the underground Jewish group Irgun led, by Menachem Begin, was by far the most extraordinary terroristic act against British authority in Palestine, both for number of casualties and for its political significance. Before looking in detail at the way it was planned and executed, an overview of the historical and political background against which this event took place is important. It is equally important to look at the political conflicts involving not just the Irgun and the British government, but also the Irgun and the rest of the Jewish resistance movement at this time in the history of the birth of Israel. Doing so allows full evaluation of the consequences of this terrorist act. Palestine in 1946 was a difficult and complex place to live in. Almost 30 years had passed since the brief moment in which most Arabs, Britons and Jews celebrated together and were united in a single emotion. On December 11, 1917, Jerusalem welcomed the arrival of British general Sir Edmund Allenby. Two days before his army had captured this city so important to Jews, Muslims and Christians throughout the world, abruptly ending four centuries of Turkish rule. The immediate future of the Middle East had already been decided in 1915 by the Sykes-Picot agreement dividing this area between England and France. The agreement was then ratified by the League of Nations in 1922. Palestine and the other Arab-populated Turkish territories beca
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Despite the moderates' criticisms, the activist wings of the Jewish Agency and of the Haganah had supported terrorist attacks as a form of defense and therefore somehow saw them as consistent with the original policy of restraint. To attack the British Army in its barracks or to blow up a bridge or a railway line was seen as a "Defense of the Defense." The rationalization of the Havlagah philosophy went one step further when actvists announced that counterattacks were permissible if "'the scope of the Jewish reprisal is equal to the magnitude of the British attack'" (Clarke, 1981, p. 78). When Sneh proposed the King David as a target in the July 1 meeting, he argued the following:"'They attacked our government body and sought to paralyze it; we will attack and paralyze their government bodies'" (Clarke, 1981, p. 83). The Haganah High Command approved the operation unanimously once they accepted Sneh's premise that destroying the King David and searching the Jewish Agency were equivalent acts. Blowing up the K-D was seen not as an act of terrorism but as a reasonable military operation, as a perfectly justified counterattack. But there was another more practical reason to bomb the hotel, and in particular the Secretariat: the
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Approximate Word count = 5629
Approximate Pages = 23 (250 words per page)
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