[vage]

July 22 1946 the KING DAVID HOTEL wing occupied by the British civil-military authorities in Jerusalem was blown up killing 91 people – 28 British, 41 Arabs, 17 Jews and 5 others. The Irgun carried out the attack and claimed responsibility.

Now, it's probably fair to characterize the attack on the King David Hotel as terrorism. But the question is at least somewhat murky. The Irgun, the group that carried out the bombing, selected the hotel as a military target, since it was the headquarters of the British military command.

Furthermore, though the loss of innocent life at the King David was indeed an outrage, it was one that could have been avoided had the British heeded the Irgun's warnings to evacuate the hotel.

The Times July 20, 2006
www.timesonline.co.uk/...17,00.html

British anger at terror celebration
By Ned Parker and Stephen Farrell

The commemoration of Israeli bombings that killing 92 people has caused offence


AS ISRAEL wages war against Hezbollah “terrorists” in Lebanon, Britain has protested about the celebration by right-wing Israelis of a Jewish “act of terrorism” against British rule 60 years ago this week.



The rightwingers, including Binyamin Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister, are commemorating the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of British rule, that killed 92 people and helped to drive the British from Palestine. They have erected a plaque outside the restored building, and are holding a two-day seminar with speeches and a tour of the hotel by one of the Jewish resistance fighters involved in the attack.

Simon McDonald, the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv, and John Jenkins, the Consul-General in Jerusalem, have written to the municipality, stating: “We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated.”

In particular they demanded the removal of the plaque that pays tribute to the Irgun, the Jewish resistance branch headed by Menachem Begin, the future Prime Minister, which carried out the attack on July 22, 1946.

The plaque presents as fact the Irgun’s claim that people died because the British ignored warning calls. “For reasons known only to the British, the hotel was not evacuated,” it states.

Mr McDonald and Dr Jenkins denied that the British had been warned, adding that even if they had “this does not absolve those who planted the bomb from responsibility for the deaths”. On Monday city officials agreed to remove the language deemed offensive from the blue sign hanging on the hotel’s gates, though that had not been done shortly before it was unveiled last night.

The controversy over the plaque and the two-day celebration of the bombing, sponsored by Irgun veterans and the right-wing Menachem Begin Heritage Centre, goes to the heart of the debate over the use of political violence in the Middle East. Yesterday Mr Netanyahu argued in a speech celebrating the attack that the Irgun were governed by morals, unlike fighters from groups such as Hamas.

“It’s very important to make the distinction between terror groups and freedom fighters, and between terror action and legitimate military action,” he said. “Imagine that Hamas or Hezbollah would call the military headquarters in Tel Aviv and say, ‘We have placed a bomb and we are asking you to evacuate the area’.”

But the view of the attack was very different in 1946 when The Times branded the Irgun “terrorists in disguise”. Decades later, Irgun veterans are unrepentant. Sarah Agassi, 80, remembers spying in the King David Hotel.

She and a fellow agent posed as a couple. They danced tangos and waltzes, sipped whisky and wine while they cased out the hotel.

On the day her brother and his fellow fighters posed as Arabs delivering milk and brought seven milk churns, each containing 50kg of explosives, into the building. Ms Agassi waited across the street until her brother rushed out. She said that she then made the warning call to the British command in the hotel.

Sitting in the luxurious hotel lobby, she expressed no regret. “We fought for our independence. We thought it was the right way . . . If I had to fight for Israel, I swear even now I would do anything.”

TWO VERSIONS

The original wording:

The Hotel housed the Mandate Secretariat as well as the Army Headquarters. On July 1946 (sic) Irgun fighters at the order of the Hebrew Resistance Movement planted explosives in the basement. Warning phone calls had been made urging the hotel’s occupants to leave immediately. For reasons known only to the British the hotel was not evacuated and after 25 minutes the bombs exploded, and to the Irgun’s regret and dismay 91 persons were killed.

The amended version

. . .Warning phone calls had been made to the hotel, the Palestine Post and the French Consulate, urging the hotel’s occupants to leave immediately.

The hotel was not evacuated, and after 25 minutes the bombs exploded. The entire western wing was destroyed, and to the Irgun’s regret 92 persons were killed.

The spirit of the King David Hotel

By Tom Segev

The terror attack on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem was in its day the equivalent of the Twin Towers; yesterday was its 60th anniversary. There are two historic plaques at the hotel, one of whose wings was used by the British Mandate authority. On one of the plaques, which has been hanging there for some time, a few words note the terror attack: ?On July 22, 1946, the Etzel underground bombed the southern wing.? The action is attributed to Etzel alone, but there is no condemnation. ?Underground? generally has a positive connotation.

The unveiling of the other plaque this week was meant to cap an academic conference held at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center on the issue of who is a freedom fighter and who is a terrorist. It was quite a week to clarify such a question. They can be distinguished by organizational affiliation, goals, targets, means of combat and mode of operation. They all assume that a freedom fighter is a good person and a terrorist is a bad one. Nearly every terrorist defines himself as a freedom fighter, and vice versa: freedom fighters are usually defined as terrorists. So was Begin. He invested a lot of effort to convince history that he was not a terrorist. Among other things, he emphasized that his organization did not harm civilians. There?s a thesis that could serve as an historic lesson from a moral standpoint: not harming civilians.



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The new plaque identifies the perpetrators of the attack as ?Etzel fighters.? It?s important for them to emphasize that they acted ?under orders from the Hebrew rebel movement,? in other words, the Hagannah, among others. They called the hotel switchboard, the editorial offices of the Palestine Post, and the French Embassy ?(presumably they meant the consulate?) ?to prevent casualties.? In other words, they sought a terrorist attack without casualties, but something went wrong. Twenty-five minutes went by and then ?for some reason? the British did not evacuate the building ?and as a result? 91 people were ?regrettably? killed. There were 28 British, 41 Arabs, 17 Jews and five others. To emphasize the military aspect of the operation, the plaque notes that one of the Etzel people was killed ?in an exchange of fire.?

The British government is demanding the plaque?s removal. Her Majesty?s ambassador and the consul have written to the mayor of Jerusalem that such an act of terror cannot be honored, even if it was preceded by a warning. To this day, it is not clear what made the bombing?s planners believe the British would evacuate the building. Would Benjamin Netanyahu, as prime minister, have ordered his bureau evacuated on the basis of telephone threat from a Palestinian terror group?

Netanyahu spoke at the conference. The difference between a terrorist operation and a legitimate military action is expressed, he said, in the fact that the terrorists intend to harm civilians whereas legitimate combatants try to avoid that. According to that theory, the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by a Palestinian organization is a legitimate military operation, and the bombing of Dresden, Hanoi, Haifa or Beirut is a war crime. Of course this is not what Netanyahu meant. He learned only this from the bombing of the hotel: that the Arabs are bad and we are good. Arab actions starting in 1920 and through the Iranian nuclear plan reflect, in his words, ?a terrorist mentality.? Israel, on the other hand, only harms civilians by accident or when there is no alternative. For example, when terrorists hide among civilians.

The historic truth is different: In the 60 years since the attack at the King David Hotel, Israel has hurt some two million civilians, including 750,000 who lost their homes in 1948, another quarter million Palestinians who were forced to leave the West Bank in the Six-Day War and hundreds of thousands of Egyptian civilians who were expelled from the cities along the Suez Canal during the War of Attrition. And now tens of thousands of Lebanese villagers are being forced to abandon their homes, and air force pilots are once again bombing Beirut and other cities. Hundreds of civilians have been killed. Regrettably. It?s all in the spirit of the King David Hotel. One can always say there was a mishap.





Copyright 2006 The Jerusalem Report
The Jerusalem Report

PLAQUE WAR


Netty C. Gross




The walls of Jerusalem speak volumes about the still passionate ideological battles between the pre-state Etzel and Lehi and the Haganah

With little fanfare, 16 handsome new blue-and-white plaques recently appeared on the stone fa?ades of Jerusalem buildings. One sign, outside the King David Hotel, claims (in Hebrew and English) that the British authorities were to blame for the 90 casualties suffered because they refused to evacuate the famous hotel's southern wing when the Irgun Zvai Leumi (Etzel) underground warned it was about to blow up British Mandate government and army HQ there in July 1946. Another, near the L.A. Mayer Islamic Museum and the Jerusalem Theater, notes that Lohamei Herut Yisrael, also known as Lehi or the Stern Gang, blew up "vacant Arab homes" to prevent their use by snipers in the battle for Jerusalem. And yet another, outside an aging apartment building at 5 Yavetz Street, in the middle of Jerusalem's downtown, notes that the second-floor apartment of Lea and Levy-Yitzhak Brandwein served as Etzel headquarters and that "Etzel members wanted by the British as well as wounded found shelter here."

Putting up plaques at sites linked with the 1940s struggle for independence is not new: 17 historical signs went up between 1988 and 1990. Of them, six were devoted to battles fought by the Haganah, the official military arm of the Yishuv institutions, against Arab armies, and 11 detail Etzel actions against the British.

The plaques themselves are an extension of the ideological rift that separated the Revisionist Etzel and the extreme nationalist Lehi, on the right, and the mainstream labor-Zionist Haganah in the 1940s. The three groups have a parallel - and often conflicting - views of what went on in the last days of the British Mandate, and the struggle for Israeli independence. The Haganah, established in 1920 by the ruling Yishuv establishment, headed by David Ben-Gurion, morphed into a force of 15,000 soldiers by 1947. The Etzel, born out of the Revisionist Zionist movement founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, had 2,000-4,000 recruits, while Lehi, headed by Avraham (code-named Yair) Stern, who was killed by the British, had 500-800 fighters. One of their main differences was the attitude toward the British, who severely limited Jewish immigration to Palestine: Ben-Gurion favored accommodation, particularly while they were fighting the Nazis in Europe, and Etzel and Lehi acted independently in attacking the British, whom they saw as occupiers.

Relations between the three groups were volatile. On June 28, 1948, for example, the Israeli army sank the Altalena, a vessel loaded by the Etzel with munitions and 900 recruits aboard, which ignored orders to surrender. Fifteen people were killed. And that September, following the assassination of U.N. mediator Count Folke Bernadotte by Lehi in Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion had 200 Lehi fighters arrested and ordered the Etzel, which had continued to operate in Jerusalem after independence, to disband within 24 hours.

The new plaques, approved and funded by Jerusalem City Hall, are different because they hardly mention the Haganah. Indeed, of the 16 plaques, six commemorate Etzel sites, seven memorialize Lehi venues, one is shared between the Etzel and the Haganah - and only one is devoted solely to the Haganah, marking the sight where the advance of the Jordanian Arab Legion outside the Old City was halted near the Notre Dame monastery. The 16th is outside a building in central Jerusalem, opposite the current President's residence, where the British Supreme Military Tribunal tried members of all three undergrounds.

The proportion is intentional, and was designed to correct a "historic imbalance," in favor the the Lehi, says Miki Cohen, who enthusiastically managed the plaque project for the municipality. Cohen, who was Jerusalem City Hall's chief of protocol in 1996-2005, under mayors Ehud Olmert and Uri Lupolianski, is untroubled that the Haganah, the largest fighting force, has the fewest citations. "The Haganah's battles against the Arabs in Jerusalem are well-documented. This was a chance to acknowledge the heroic contributions of other underground groups against the British, from an earlier period," he explains, noting that veterans groups from the various factions played a "strong role" in advocating for their plaques. One of the groups behind the project is the Heritage Association of Freedom Fighters in Israel, a group of former Lehi members who had been pushing for the new plaques for over a decade. Ahuva Meisells, 76, a retired teacher from Jerusalem who joined Lehi as a teenager, originally submitted a wish list of 23 signs to Cohen. Meisells, who today helps run a Tel Aviv museum called Beit Yair, named after Lehi leader Stern, says she took the initiative "because our story in Jerusalem is not well known."

There are, however, critics who don't agree with either Cohen or Meisells. They charge that the new plaques are deliberately misleading, and represent the latest move in a continuing campaign by surviving Etzel and Lehi veterans to redraw history and snatch a larger share of the credit for the accomplishments of the pre-state period and the 1948 War of Independence. "The plaques are a distortion of history and annoying to look at," says Yosef Heller, a Hebrew University historian of the period. Several of the Etzel and Lehi plaques were put up near where Heller lives in the Old Katamon neighborhood, which was conquered from the Arabs after the British left in May 1948 and is dotted with stately former Arab houses popular among well-heeled new immigrants from the West. The sort of operations in which the two groups were engaged, says Heller, "just marginally" accelerated the departure of the British from Mandatory Palestine. "They were in the process of decolonization and had decided to leave the region anyway," he says. "Today, any serious academic knows that the Haganah fought all the decisive battles" in establishing the state.

It is "outrageous" to turn places around Jerusalem where the Etzel "secretly met or hid members or munitions" into "shrines" deserving of historical citation, charges Heller, who is modern Orthodox and not particularly identified with the left or right. Heller sees the new plaques as part of a continuing effort on the part of old-timers affiliated with Etzel and Lehi to "rewrite history and to brainwash the public."

Not surprisingly, veterans of the two groups disparage such criticism. Retired Hebrew University biochemistry professor-turned-historian Yehuda Lapidot, who has been leading the Etzel veterans' plaque campaign in Jerusalem, joined the underground organization in 1943, at age 15. He married Rachel Brandwein, whose late parents' home now bears a plaque. By his telling, the plaques merely correct "years of bias" against Etzel comrades. Indeed, he argues, denial of the credit due them is just a small part of what they endured over the years of Labor rule from 1948 to 1977. In the 50s, recalls Lapidot, Etzel veterans could not easily find jobs or receive disability pensions from the Ministry of Defense for injuries sustained before May 1948, which were routinely awarded to Haganah veterans. (The policy changed only after Menachem Begin, the former Etzel leader, became prime minister in 1977.)

"And when (Labor's) Teddy Kollek was mayor of Jerusalem, he refused to hang up plaques to honor Etzel," says Lapidot, noting that then-mayor Ehud Olmert approved the plan for the new plaques some years ago.

Cohen, who is now on the staff of the non-profit Jerusalem Foundation, says he composed the texts on the 16 plaques, which were later vetted by Defense Ministry historians. He asserts that Jerusalem-ites' reaction to the plaques has been "positive" - though he does recall some "passionate arguments" between old-timers from the various factions and supporters "over the facts."

While Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski had little to do with the project, Cohen says he did "sign off" on it about a year ago, and that the signs got the approval of the Jerusalem's Signs Committee, headed by chief structural engineer Uri Cheetrit.

Cohen says that the plaques cost 25,000 shekels ($ 5,500) each and that arguments between veterans over text content contributed to delays in their installation. Retired chemist Dr. Romek Fein, now 85, belongs to a group of about 125 veterans of the Haganah's Moriah Brigade who are miffed that the Palmach - a full-time military force assembled by the Haganah in 1941 - hogged too much of the limelight. The Palmach, they say, eclipsed the sacrifices and valor of their own fighting force, which lost hundreds of its members in at least a dozen key battles in and around Jerusalem. In 2002, at their own expense, the veterans placed Hebrew-language memorial signs around Jerusalem, after receiving permission to do so, but not funding, from City Hall.

Retired quarry operator Moshe Yarkoni, 78 - a commander in Moriah's bloody battle for the Greek Orthodox St. Simeon monastery in Katamon, where 40 Jewish soldiers perished and 60 were wounded - says the Etzel and Lehi fighters didn't compare to Haganah soldiers in bravery, warfare or importance. "We're older people now and I don't mean to get into a fight, but all these plaques hailing them as great heroes, it's nonsense. The Haganah was 10 times larger, and highly organized. The Etzel and Lehi were small, untrained, with poor leadership, and, frankly, when it came down to it, cowardly. They were schooled in guerrilla tactics. They threw a bomb here, a bomb there, and ran. But they could not, for example, defend a position. For example, their units were no match for the Arab Legion during the battle for the police station at Ammunition Hill" in northeast Jerusalem, which Etzel fighters lost in 1948 and Israel Defense Forces reconquered during the Six-Day War.

Fein puts it differently. "The Haganah fought the Arabs," he says. The Etzel and Lehi "picked a softer target, the British" before the Mandate ended.

Former Etzel member Lapidot shakes off the criticism of his group as a fighting force. "The Haganah," he says, "always knew how to run a good smear campaign. They accused us of atrocities and downplayed their own." He calls the King David Hotel bombing "a brilliant and gutsy operation," and says it and other actions were the key to the British departure in 1948. "The only reason the British left India was because of a vicious guerrilla campaign to get them out," he says, implicitly discounting Mahatma Gandhi's passive resistance campaign. "The same was true of Kenya, where the Mau-Mau slaughtered them."

Lapidot also rejects suggestions by Yarkoni and Fein that the April 9, 1948 operation at Deir Yassin - where he was deputy commander of the Etzel force - was a foolish act of bravado. Yarkoni calls the oft-published charges that 250 Palestinian men were slaughtered and women were raped there a lie, putting the death toll at 45. Lapidot's statement, however, conflicts with the official army account of the incident, written by Lt. Col. Netanel Lorch in 1961 and cited by noted historian Martin Gilbert, indicating that hundreds of Arabs were killed at Deir Yassin.

Even after all this time, the debate continues. Historian Heller recently declined an invitation to take part in a conference on the 60th anniversary of the King David bombing, organized by the Herzl Institute of Haifa University for this fall, because he sees it - and the plaques - as an attempt to whitewash the still-tarnished image of Etzel and Lehi. That, he says, goes against the grain of the truth and flirts dangerously with contemporary ideas about terrorism.

Lehi veteran Ahuva Meisells categorically rejects any comparison, express or implied, between her group and contemporary Islamic terror. "We didn't want to kill the British," she says. "We wanted to frighten them because they didn't let us protect ourselves."

London Times
April 27 1998

MIDDLE EAST
©

How I helped to blow up the King David Hotel


THE murderous terror attacks that eroded Britain's resolve to continue its Mandate over Palestine and hastened the creation of Israel, were assisted by a Jewish spy operating inside British military headquarters in Jerusalem.

Now 81, but possessing an uncanny recall of those turbulent years, David Shalom Rubovitz told The Times in an exclusive interview that he felt no remorse, and that he had advised leaders of the Stern Gang, the most bloodthirsty of the Jewish terror groups, to step up their campaign against British targets.

"I knew the mentality of the British. You had to strike at them physically," said the former mole who was in charge of the transport section at British headquarters in the King David Hotel from 1945 until discharged in 1948, as his papers show, "due to the closing down of this HQ".

Mr Rubovitz, whose undercover role has been confirmed by senior Jewish underground sources, spoke in impeccable English in his cramped flat in the religious Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak. "I knew that the British would not want to sacrifice their lives and the lives of their men for either the Arabs or the Jews."

His claims about Britain's declining will to continue the Mandate for Palestine begun in 1922 — in which the territory was placed under British administration by the League of Nations — is confirmed by many historians.

Mr Rubovitz, a mild-mannered man with an infectious laugh, makes an unlikely spy. He was recruited to Lehi, the Hebrew acronym for the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel — one of whose most ruthless leaders was Yitzhak Shamir, the future right-wing Prime Minister, — by a 16-year-old girl, Yael Ben-Dov.

"She arrived at my house early one morning and persuaded me to use my place on the vital seventh floor of the King David to bring about the humiliation and departure of the British imperial power," recalled Mr Rubovitz. He had the codename "Yigal" and in 1981 was presented with the Defence Ministry medal awarded by Menachem Begin, then Prime Minister and formerly leader of the rival IZL (Irgun) terrorist group.

Mr Rubovitz disclosed how he operated without ever attracting British suspicion. "Whenever I came across an interesting statement — particularly in the classified fortnightly intelligence reports to which I had easy access — I used to copy it on the spot ... I would later meet Yael at various places away from the eyes of the British and give her the information."

The spy, who still carries discharge papers describing his conduct as exemplary and his work for the British forces as "very satisfactory", remains bitter about Britain's conduct and the alleged bias of many Mandate officials against the Jews. "I am happy you British went," he said. "You never did anything good here."

He said that by far the most important document which he copied was a fortnightly report which appeared in September 1946, two months after the horrific IZL bomb attack on the King David using booby-trapped milk churns, which killed 91 people, 28 of them Britons. It contained an assessment which he can still quote verbatim: "(a) The constant murderous attacks of Stern may, if increased, cause His Majesty's Government to reconsider their position in the country; (b) There is no doubt that this gang is the most dangerous element in the Middle East that our forces have to face."

Mr Rubovitz said that the circulation of this intelligence assessment did much to boost the morale of the Stern fighters. "When I gave it to Yael to be passed on to the Stern commanders, then living under cover in Tel Aviv, I made the point to them that he who tired first would be the loser." A year later the British were on their way home.

Asked why he had chosen to discuss his role, Mr Rubovitz — who knew in advance about the King David attack, which also killed 41 Arabs and 17 Jews — said: "I think people in Britain and Israel are entitled to know, once and forever, one of the main reasons why the British Government quit Palestine when it did and the Jewish state was established."

Mr Rubovitz also played a crucial role in Lehi's assassination of the Swedish UN mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, gunned down in Jerusalem on September 17, 1948 only days after presenting a revised blueprint to solve the Jewish-Arab conflict. In a chilling revelation not previously published, Mr Rubovitz handed me the photograph of the languid-looking Count that he showed to the killers a few days before the attack.

The plan would have partitioned Palestine, giving Jerusalem and the Negev to Jordan, and allowed Israel to keep western Galilee. "He was a British stooge who wanted to give Jerusalem to King Abdullah of Jordan," Mr Rubovitz said, looking at the old print without a hint of compassion. "He had to be killed. There was no alternative."



[End]

CAPTION [David Rubovitz: "I am happy you British went" Jewish refugees
from war-ravaged Europe arriving on board a packed ship in Haifa just
weeks before the declaration of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948.]

The King David Hotel was being used as a military base. Thus it was not a civilian target, except that the British had chosen to place their military base in the midst of civilians, which is generally forbidden by the 4th Geneva Convention. Technically, then, its bombing was not terrorism - and the civilian lives would not have been lost if the commander had heeded the warning and evacuated.

> What sort of message do you
> suppose that sends out to the Palestinians?

One that they have never heeded. If the Palestinians took it as a model for appropriate behavior, restricted themselves to bombing only Israeli military installations and sent warnings of bombs to protect civilian lives who might be affected in such cases, that would be a perfectly splendid message for them to take from it.

When Stalin invaded Poland on September 17, 1939 his NKVD transported 1.5-2 million Polish citizens in cattle-trucks to Siberia and left them to die. He did of course arrange for 15.000+ to be murdered at Katyn and others to be used as slave labour.

When Hitler finally got tired of his ally, the USSR and attacked, Stalin was reluctantly persuaded to disgorge some of the poor specimens of humanity to fight with the British as the Carpathian Regiment.....they were brought out to Iran and fought in North Africa and at Monte Cassino.

However about 3.000 went AWOL in Palestine, amongst them men like Yiztak Shamir and Menachem Begin. They created new groups like the Irgun and the Stern Gang; not to fight the Germans who were actively arranging a coup in Baghdad and intended to come down from the Crimea into the Middle East........no Begin's target was the British; to fight them whilst they were at war with the Germans.

As for warnings on the King David, I think it will be found there were none, and that the milk churns with the bombs did quite enough damage to Britons and Jewish civilians to be remembered with accuracy. Other Polish troops did fight through to Breda, and had more a hatred of the Soviets and the Nazis than of the British.

"The nature of the warning, and especially its timing, have been a matter of debate ever since. According to a secret British police report quoted in Bethel, The Palestine Triangle, a warning was received by the hotel operator but was only just being delivered to the British officer in charge as the bomb went off. "



At the time, the King David Hotel, a crossroads of intrigue and espionage in the Middle East, was being used in part as a headquarters by the British authorities, who had forcibly turned away shiploads of Jewish refugees trying to reach Palestine.

Moderates and Radicals

Among the Jews already in Palestine, there were stark conflicts about how to drive the British out and establish an independent state of Israel, differences between moderates and radicals that persist in Israeli politics today, and that surfaced again last night.

The Haganah, the largest Jewish military force, usually played the moderate role, emphasizing self-defense. The Irgun Zvai Leumi, or National Military Organization, which Mr. Begin led, worked underground to attack British and Arab targets in retribution for attacks on Jews. The Stern Gang also operated underground. Initially, all three endorsed the plan to blow up British headquarters at the King David.

They were provoked by a British Army action against Jew ish leaders and settlemen ts on June 29, 1946. On that ''Black Saturday'' about 25,000 troops smashed into homes and kibbutzim, arresting 2,500 Jews and confiscat ing weapons.

''One search party marched into the dining hall at Givat Brenner shouting 'Heil Hitler!' Mr. Clarke wrote. ''Another party scrawled red swastikas on the walls of the settlement's classrooms. While searching the Bank Hapoalim in Tel Aviv, a British officer shouted at one of the clerks, 'What you need is the gas chamber!' ''

'See, We Warned You'

Mr. Begin's Irgun took on the task of blowing up the King David, but only afte r warning the British so that th ey would evacuate the building, Mr. Clarke finds. Adina Hay-Nissan, then a teen-age girl who moved easily as an Irgun courier, was giv en the job of calling inthe warning.

She recalled last night that she had waited for a long time outside the hotel until she got a signal that the charges were planted. Then she telephoned the British command from a pharmacy across the street, she said, and spoke first in English, then in Hebrew: ''This is the Hebrew resistance uprising. We planted bombs in the hotel. Please vacate it immediately. See, we warned you.''

Then, she said, she ran to King George Street and phoned the French Consulate, which was near the hotel. Then she went farther along and phoned The Palestine Post, a newspaper that is now The Jerusalem Post. She walked slowly up Jaffa Road, and as she passed a police station near the market at Mahane Yehuda, she recalled, ''I heard the big explosion.'' When she learned later that the British had ignored her warnings, she said, ''I was baffled; there we were, genuinely trying to save lives, and they took no heed.''

Last night's reception, in the Blue Room just off the hotel's lobby, drew about 100 people and began with a minute of silence for the 91 people killed in the blast - British, Arabs and Jews. ''I am sorry about what happened about the casualties,'' said Israel Levi, who now sells office supplies, and then, under the code name Gideon, set the fuses.

'I Was Sorry a Long Time'

He is a small, muscular, sturdy-l@ooking man with a rough face and a smile that does not touch his eyes. ''I was sorry a long time afterwards,'' he said, ''but they had a lot of time, more than half an hour, they all had time to get out.''

Yitzhak Tobiana, who guarded a corridor, caught the mixture of emotions. ''I am very proud of the operation militarily,'' he said. ''I felt myself like a soldier of these Jewish forces. But I feel very sorry about the number of victims.'' His wife, Yochevet, also of the Irgun, said she was revolted by the question, ''How do you feel?''

''We are people,'' she said. ''We know how to love, we know how to hate. We know how to kiss. We have all the emotions of everybody else.''

Teddy Kollek, now Mayor of Jerusalem, then a moderate member of the Jewish Agency, arrived grim-faced and spoke firmly against the bombing. ''I was then against terror, and I am today,'' he told the gathering. ''They were courageous groups, but their influence in getting the British out was limited. It's doubtful that we gained anything from acts of terror; perhaps more damage was done than anything else.''

'Sadness and Mourning'

To which Irgun's Jerusalem-area commander at the time, Yitzhak Avinoam, replied that ''after the action itself there was a feeling of sadness and mourning,'' but that the aim was accomplished. He accused Mr. Kollek of turning over to the British ''a list of 1,000 underground fighters, and I would call this collaboration with the British.'' The Mayor had already left and did not hear the accusation.

Tyler Spafford, whose wife's uncle, Bernard Godwin Bourdillon, was among the victims, gazed out over the proceedings and pronounced them inappropriate. ''I think it's sad that there is such a jovial party over such an unfortunate incident,'' he said. But then he went and somberly shook hands with Israel Levi, alias Gideon, the man who set the fuses.


Copyright 2002 The Jerusalem Post
The Jerusalem Post



Clearing the debris from a decades-old explosion

Yosef Evron

'We complied with the Hagana's request and without delay published a factual account of what had happened at the King David Hotel. Only one fact was omitted - that on 1 July the Hagana had told us to go ahead with the operation'. This redacted excerpt is from Gidi and the Jewish Campaign against British Rule in Palestine by Yosef Evron, Ministry of Defense Publishing, Israel, 2001.

BODY:
Monday, 22 July 1946, was a typical, sultry summer day. Heat hung heavy in the streets of Jerusalem. The air seemed to be standing still. People moved about in desultory fashion, searching in vain for a sheltered spot, a refuge from the relentless rays of the sun.

In the region of the King David Hotel, nerve center of the British Mandatory Administration, headed by the High Commissioner Sir Alan Cunningham, The Chief Secretary Sir John Shaw and GOC Armed Forces Sir Evelyn Barker, routine life continued as normal. Security forces had built high fences to forestall any attempt by terrorists to lob hand grenades into the complex.

The hotel, the Secretariat and the police detachment were connected by a central alarm system; in the event of any incident, a loud siren would be activated and military and police personnel dispatched immediately to the scene. Surrounded by wire fences and substantial military forces, it was a place where all felt secure and protected.

At 12: 37 precisely a massive explosion was heard, shaking the whole of Jerusalem, sending shock waves as far as London and rocking the foundations of British domination in the land.

Ears were ringing and the whole street was hidden by a cloud of black smoke. An entire wing of the hotel building had seemed to rise up in the air, then crumble as it collapsed in a hail of masonry and clouds of dust.

For a moment all were stunned, unable to move, barely breathing. It was if a suspense film had jammed at a crucial point, leaving a horrific image flickering on the screen, but no sound; as if human beings had been turned to stone and all movement had ceased.

"The behavior of the Hagana was strange," Menachem Begin complained. "In spite of the directive not to publicize the identity of the perpetrators - the evening of 22 July I received a note from Israel Galili, asking us to declare publicly that it was the Irgun Zvai Leumi that carried out the attack on the King David Hotel. Galili added that the Hagana for its part would make no announcement. We complied with the Hagana's request and without delay published a factual account of what had happened at the King David Hotel. Only one fact was omitted - that on 1 July the Hagana had told us to go ahead with Operation Chick the code name for the bombing ..."

Neither Moshe Sneh, nor Galili, nor Yitzhak Sadeh (as will be seen at a later stage) had any intention of letting the IZL claim sole credit for the operation. They wanted it for themselves.

It was only when the scale of the death-toll - resulting from the failure of the British to evacuate the hotel - became known, that they hurriedly asked Begin to take exclusive responsibility for the action, clinging desperately to Yitzhak Sadeh's dishonest assertion that "the operation was not conducted according to the agreed timetable "

On 9 August 1968, the editor of a history of the Hagana, Yehuda Slotzky, wrote to Israel Galili (then serving as a government minister), asking for his version of the King David Hotel episode: "I'm drafting the chapter on the King David Hotel, and I have, among others, two testimonies at my disposal: that of Mr. Begin (in his book The Revolt) and that of Dr. Moshe Sneh, which I received a few weeks ago." Slotzky concluded his appeal to Galili with a question: "Who gave the IZL the order (or permission) to carry out the bombing?"

In this context Slotzky raises the hypothesis (a not entirely implausible one) "that the national command decided after 19 July 1946 the day after the X Committee accepted Chaim Weizmann's ultimatum to suspend all activities against the British - author's note that the dissidents should be allowed to execute their plan, because they didn't accept the political leadership of either Dr. Weizmann or the X Committee."

Galili's reply was the central testimony on which Slotzky relied in the King David Hotel chapter in The Hagana. The text of the original article went through numerous revisions and in the end several sections were omitted, some of them handwritten (apparently by Galili) - sections tending to refute the allegations of Yitzhak Sadeh that Gidi IZL OC operations Amihai Paglin's underground nickname was not acting in accordance with the agreed timetable In another draft the hand-written note appears: It appeared that the precise timing of the operation had not been adequately clarified in discussions between Yitzhak Sadeh and Paglin.

It seems that the historians of the Hagana put themselves through a number of contortions in their efforts to defend the credibility of the Chief of Staff of the Insurgency Movement, Yitzhak Sadeh. In the end they despaired of it - and simply erased the offending sections from the official history

TWO LIES fueled the insidious propaganda campaign directed against the IZL in the aftermath of the King David Hotel episode, and naturally enough they focused on the man responsible for the detailed planning of the operation, the late Amihai Paglin.

One of these lies - the invention patented by Yitzhak Sadeh, according to which "Gidi didn't keep to the timetable we agreed on" - has been dismissed by the historian Yigal Ilem as "hypocrisy" and as a "pale and pathetic excuse," an attempt to absolve himself of responsibility and lay the blame on the IZL.

The other lie concerns the warning. The British went out of their way to try and prove there had been no warning. They clung to this lie as if it were an article of faith, and hitched to it all the official propaganda machinery available to them in this country and abroad.

They carried on with this even after the British Forces newspaper in the Middle East, the Middle East Post, reported in its 23 July issue (the day after the explosion): "Fifteen minutes before the explosion, the telephonist of the King David Hotel received an anonymous tip-off, warning that the hotel was about to go up and she should run for her life."

The leaders of the Insurgency Movement maintained a dignified silence. After all, the British lie accorded well with Yitzhak Sadeh's flawed version of events.

The two lies came together, complementing one another perfectly, in the project of laying the blame for the deaths in the hotel blast at the door of the IZL exclusively: "Responsibility for this horrific death-toll is due to the IZL and the IZL alone" - charged the Hagana magazine.

Hagana command knew the whole truth - and kept silent. It took 30 years for Israel Galili to pluck up the courage to state publicly what had been tucked away inside him for many years. Commenting on the episode in 1978, he said: "I'm not alleging that the IZL ever intended to shed innocent blood. No one denies that a telephone warning was given in advance. It is beyond any doubt that the issue of evacuation was addressed casually, with fatal results, and I cannot understand the behavior of the British. They had every reason to take the warnings seriously. Since 22 July 1946 to this day, I have never wavered in my belief that the British are not to be absolved of blame, in that they failed to expedite the evacuation of staff from the offices. At the time we received information from intelligence sources that when the telephone warning was brought to Shaw's attention, he retorted: 'We are not here to take orders from the Jews, but to give them orders.'"

It took the British a little longer - 33 years - to admit that a warning had been given by the IZL: Lord Janner, formerly president of the Zionist Federation and not a political ally of Begin, made a speech in the House of Lords on 22 May 1979, a speech absolving the IZL of responsibility for the heavy loss of life caused by the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946. Ninety-one persons died in the King David Hotel explosion: 41 Arabs, 28 Britons, 17 Jews and five of other nationalities.

WHY DID Shaw not order the evacuation of the hotel?

Twenty-three years after the explosion - when he was interviewed for a Voice of Israel radio program - this was still a mystery to Begin: "...It didn't occur to them that we really had smuggled explosives into the hotel. As I've said before, it was a fortress, and it was hard for them to imagine us succeeding in penetrating the wire fence, evading the mobile patrols and the machine-gun emplacements and all the rest; and then there's the matter of the incendiary bomb outside, the one that preceded the main explosion - maybe they thought that was it, end of story! Perhaps they thought it was all a joke at their expense, meant as a blow to the prestige of the British government and the British empire; the Jews wanted to see the British ruling class running in panic from the hotel...They all should have gotten out, and what would it have mattered if it did turn out to be a false alarm, or just a smoke-bomb or something? If they assumed the warning wasn't serious and the intention was to humiliate them, that could explain why they preferred to stay put. And there's a third possibility: they were simply afraid to come out. Perhaps they thought we wanted to get them out of the fortress and into the open so we could ambush them. But of course these are only speculations. No one will know for certain, so long as Mr. Shaw declines to explain his reasons for not evacuating the hotel, despite the warning that was received."

Amihai Paglin, operations officer of the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the one who planned the King David Hotel action - points to another consideration which could have influenced Shaw's decision: At that time the British decided to plant an informer in the ranks of the IZL in Jerusalem, preferably in a senior combat command role, a position which would guarantee the British advance notice of all operations planned by the Irgun in the Jerusalem area.

"The informer did indeed serve as commander of one of the back-up units in the bombing of the King David Hotel. Beforehand, he tried to get away from the briefing room to make contact with Shaw, but the security rules in Irgun combat units were strict and he wasn't allowed to leave, even though it wasn't yet known he was an enemy agent... Lack of information from the above-mentioned informer was apparently one of Shaw's major considerations in deciding to ignore the warning given him. Absence of information on the one hand and serious miscalculation on the other - an assumption that the docile leadership of the Jewish community would not dare sanction such an extreme action - these, in my opinion, led to Mr. Shaw's fateful decision not to evacuate the building."

And there may be yet another reason why the order to evacuate was not given: This has been suggested by Elimelech Spiegel, in whose workshop, in Fierberg Street in Tel Aviv, the bombs were assembled... Fifty-three years on, Elimelech Spiegel is still convinced the milk-churns exploded prematurely.

"I'm the one who fitted the chemical and mechanical clocks to the churns that were smuggled into the basement of the King David Hotel," he says, "and the warning period was set at 45 minutes, not 35. I'd stake my life on it. Someone tried to dismantle the bombs and that's why they exploded prematurely. I reckon that's why the Brits were in no hurry to evacuate: they thought they could neutralize the explosives and when that didn't work, they had to do something to clear themselves of the charge of homicide, so they made up that story about getting no advance warning."

The suspicion that the British tried to defuse the bombs was not confined to Spiegel alone. It was also a topic of great interest to the intelligence branch of the Hagana. Intelligence documents from this period are crammed with information pointing in that direction.


The Jerusalem Post

The bomb that triggered independence

Keren Markuze


50 years after the bombing of the King David Hotel, key questions remain unanswered, Keren Markuze reports


A series of explosions resounded from within the heart of Jerusalem. A dense column of smoke covered the city. Civilians on buses were herded off and made to stand still against stone walls. Fear and tension pervaded the atmosphere. The stench of death dominated the scene.

These are the recollections of those who witnessed the event to which many attribute Israel's Declaration of Independence the bombing of the King David Hotel.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the bombing, and time has not erased the memory of this historic, desperate event. The perpetuation of this memory is due not only to the mourning of the victims' families, but equally to the success of this terrorist mission, and its subsequent political significance it led directly to the establishment of the State of Israel.

Despite the bombing's importance, the contentious nature of the affair prevented the accurate recording of the chain of events leading up to it. The official account of the attack was not publicized by the Defense Ministry until the past few years. British accounts were kept confidential for 30 years, and to date some relevant documents remain closed in the British Foreign Office.

According to Neil Cobbett, of the British Public Record Office, certain documents pertaining to the bombing are kept closed because they may "cause distress to former members of the government, or personnel, or to public opinion."

In fact, the attack was soured by a series of intentional "miscommunications" on the part of the British authorities, says the son of one of the victims, Ithamar Rosen, giving them reason to fear public scrutiny.

Today it seems certain that the British purposely exacerbated the operation, causing the death and injury of almost 100 people.

The July 22, 1946, bombing of the King David Hotel was the work of the Irgun Zva'i Leumi (IZL), the extremist movement that broke off from the Hagana in favor of a more aggressive strategy. The IZL's main goal was to rid Palestine of British rule, to which end it engaged in a series of bombings, targeting train stations and railroads.

At this time, Jewish immigration was at a standstill and Jews feared remaining a permanent minority in the country. However, the IZL's tactics were supported by only a minority of the population. Although the group's publications were frequently read, and its stance admired, there was a general fear among the Jewish population of staging the offensives which the group advocated.

Despite popular opinion, the IZL continued its attacks, culminating in the bombing of the King David, then the headquarters of the British administration.

According to all existing accounts of the event, three warnings were issued prior to the execution of the operation, internally referred to as Malonchik ("Little Hotel").

The first was a call to the King David itself, where the message was received by the telephone operator, the second to the offices of The Palestine Post (as The Jerusalem Post then was), and the third to the nearby French consulate. All three places later confirmed they received these warnings calling for a complete evacuation of the hotel. But the building was not evacuated.

On the contrary, says Rosen, citing first-hand accounts he heard from survivors, British authorities purposely prevented people from exiting the building, and ordered military police to stand outside and block the exits.

But the operation was already in motion and could not be stopped.

Milk cans containing explosives were delivered to the hotel's grill room, La Regence. At 12: 37 they exploded, demolishing the entire southwest wing of the building, leaving what a newspaper referred to as "a huge, gaping chasm."

According to Rosen, the British government wanted to create dissent among the Jews -- the IZL would be blamed for the attack and the deaths, and the British would be, at least temporarily, absolved of all responsibility.

Says Rosen: "They wanted the majority blaming the IZL, but the IZL ... didn't want people to die."

IZL MEMBER Yechiel Kadishai, who did not participate in this particular attack, says the IZL took the deaths of the 91 victims, among them 19 Jews, very hard: "I remember seeing later an announcement in the paper of a man called Shimshi who was killed. It was very sad."

Kadishai gives several other possible causes for British secretary-general Shaw's orders to prevent evacuation.

A few minutes before the warning was issued there was a small explosion outside the King David, to indicate to the IZL members outside that the explosives had been successfully deposited. Perhaps, says Kadishai, the British thought this was already the bomb.

But a more likely explanation he says, lies in Shaw's own ego. "One IZL member by the name of Reinholt had a direct connection with Shaw and regularly informed him of each terrorist activity. This time, he didn't have a chance to tell him because he was also taking part in the operation and couldn't leave his post." Kadishai says that Shaw was insulted and acted accordingly.

Shaw's documented stance was: "We are not here to take orders from the Jews. We give them orders." But the British government began to back down following this attack.

Alexander Zvielli, an employee of The Palestine Post at the time of the bombing, considers the attack the "breaking point" of British rule. He says, "More and more British started thinking: 'What do we need all this effort for? The mandate can be surrendered.' "

But when the British finally did leave the country almost two years later it was in anger, says Zvielli, who believes that for many years following the attack Israel was "still paying for the bombing of the King David."

Zvielli adds that the event stimulated antisemitism in Britain, and an animosity that persisted for a long time.

But many feel that the bombing was a success. "It takes months to think of how to stage an attack that will change the political climate," says Kadishai proudly.

"It was a question of to be or not to be," says Zvielli, in defense of the bombing.

Naturally the families of the victims are left questioning the "success" of the mission. Rosen harbors feelings of frustration that, after so many years, no plaque or memorial has been erected to commemorate the deaths of those who lost their lives in this bombing.

[Avatan]

Now, it's probably fair to characterize the attack on the King David Hotel as terrorism. But the question is at least somewhat murky. The Irgun, the group that carried out the bombing, selected the hotel as a military target, since it was the headquarters of the British military command.

Many pro-Israelis call them freedom fighters, both in public and in private. In fact, you can't really be anti-Igrun if you're also a fan of Begin and Sharon, since they got their start in the ranks of this particular Zionist movement, which heavily shaped their perception of the politics and social resistance methodologies of their region. I'd say that the question is indeed not murky at all. It's crystal clear. They won, therefore, they are freedom fighters. There is absolutely no sense in arguing that point with any pro-Israeli westerner either, since anyone who will take the position that they are "freedom fighters" will likely never change their opinion on the subject. The same can be said for anyone who advocates the necissity for the Intifadas and the War of Attrition.

However, if I recall correctally, several of the major British newspapers at the time splashed the headlines like "Jewish Terrorists Bomb King David" all over their front pages... so I would have to conclude that (at the time) they were considered to be "terrorists" because:

a) They did not yet have political legitimacy.

b) They were fighting an established authority which used (as they still do today) dire terminology in order to clearly identify their enemy.

Furthermore, though the loss of innocent life at the King David was indeed an outrage, it was one that could have been avoided had the British heeded the Irgun's warnings to evacuate the hotel.

Warning someone prior to demolishing the area around where they are staying or working in no way excuses the act, nor does it make it any more acceptable in retrospect. They barrel-bombed a major hub knowing full-well that innocent lives would be lost one way or the other.

In other words, if you believe it was a righteous act, you're going to have to accept the fact that hardliners just like you in the Muslim world will likely be commemorating Al-Qaeda's "brilliant" attack on America on 9-11 60 years from now, and you won't really be able to say anything about it on an intellectual level, because 60 years before, you said the same thing about your people.

All's fair in love and war.