The Bombing of The King David Hotel, July 1946¨

Professor Bruce Hoffman,

Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

Abstract
On July 22, 1946, the Irgun Zvai Le’umi (National Military
Organization) a Jewish terrorist organization opposed to Britain’s
continued rule of Palestine, bombed Jerusalem’s King David Hotel. The
incident has always been controversial given the fact that the facility
was not an ordinary hotel, but also the nerve center of British rule
over that country——housing its military headquarters, intelligence
stations, and government secretariat. Further, at the time it was
claimed that warnings were issued to evacuate the hotel that British
officials callously ignored. This article addresses three key
questions surrounding the bombing: Was the King David Hotel in fact a
legitimate military target? Were warnings in fact given to evacuate the
hotel? And, if so, why wasn’t the hotel evacuated? The answers, while
critical in reaching an accurate accounting and factual understanding
of a highly controversial event, interestingly also shed light on the
efficacy and morality of terrorism as an instrument of national
liberation and agent of political change.

Key words: Terrorism, Irgun Zvai Le’umi, Etzel, Menachem Begin, King
David Hotel, British Mandate for Palestine

___________
¨
This article incorporates material first published in the

author’s Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947 (New

York: Knopf, 2015). This material pertains to the specific details of

the bombing, its planning, logistics, and execution. The overall

argument and structure is materially different from that which appears

in Anonymous Soldiers.
 - 2 -

The Second Lebanon War was little more than a week old when, in
July 2006, a ceremony was held at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel to mark
the 60th anniversary of its bombing. A plaque affixed to the wrought
iron fence outside the hotel’s southwest wing was unveiled. In white
letters against a blue background, the colors of the Israeli flag, it
read

King David Hotel

The hotel housed the British Mandate Secretariat as well as

the Army Headquarters. On July 1946, 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 plaque’s wording prompted protests from both the British

ambassador in Tel Aviv and consul-general in Jerusalem. “We do not
think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss
of many lives to be commemorated,” Simon McDonald and John Jenkins
wrote to the Jerusalem Municipality, “Not only had no warning been
given, they stated, but even if it had “this does not absolve those who
planted the bomb from responsibility for the deaths.”1 Seeking to avoid
a diplomatic incident, the city complied and shortly afterwards a new
plaque with a slightly amended version of those events appeared.2 The
relevant portion now, albeit ungrammatically, states

Warning phone calls has [sic] been made, to the hotel’s

dispatch, 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 [sic] was destroyed and to the
Irgun’s regret 92 [sic] persons were killed.3
 - 3 -

The curiously revised figure of 92 deaths, included an Irgun fighter

who died inside the hotel as a result of a gun battle with British
troops.4
The irony of a decades-old controversy surfacing at the same time
that Israel was battling Hezbollah in Lebanon was not lost on the
participants at a conference held at the nearby Menachem Begin Heritage
Centre to coincide with the anniversary and plaque’s unveiling. “It’s
very important to make the distinction between terror groups and
freedom fighters, and between terror action and legitimate military
action,” the current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued
in a speech to the gathering. “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’.”5
Indeed, Menachem Begin, one of Netanyahu’s ideological mentors and
predecessors as prime minister and, who at the time commanded the Irgun
Zvai Leumi, or National Military Organization, the group responsible
for the bombing, always denied that their intention in attacking the
King David was to harm anyone. “We did not want to hurt one living
soul,” he repeatedly claimed. This was why, Begin insisted, the Irgun
affixed timers to the bombs so that the hotel could be evacuated and
had also set off a small, diversionary explosion across the street to
clear the area before issuing the three separate warnings that the
plaque cites.6 Yet, despite all these precautions, tragedy nonetheless
ensued.
Three questions continue to be at the heart of a dispute that has
raged for more than a half century:
• Was the King David Hotel in fact a legitimate military target?
• Were warnings given to evacuate the hotel? And,
• If so, why wasn’t the hotel evacuated?
The answers, while critical in reaching an accurate accounting and
factual understanding of a highly controversial event, interestingly
also shed light on the efficacy and morality of terrorism as an
instrument of national liberation and agent of political change.
 - 4 -

WAS THE KING DAVID HOTEL A LEGITIMATE MILITARY TARGET?

There was no other place in 1940s Palestine like Jerusalem’s King
David Hotel. Built during the 1929 riots in a luxurious manner meant,
in the words of its Swiss interior designer to “evoke by reminiscence,
the ancient Semitic style and the ambience of the glorious period of
King David,”7 Briton, Jew, and Arab, along with a glittering array of
visiting potentates, dignitaries, and the well-heeled, regularly
congregated at its popular bar; dined and danced in its basement
nightclub, La Regence; or took tea in the aptly named Grand Lobby.
The uncontested cynosure of the country’s social life, the King
David was also the nerve center of British rule: housing the government
secretariat, army headquarters, and the local offices of Britain’s
various military and civilian security and intelligence services. At
the height of the Arab Rebellion nearly a decade before, the British
Army had requisitioned the hotel’s fourth floor for use as its
headquarters. Shortly afterward, the Palestine Government took over
the ground floor, mezzanine level, and the three remaining upper floors
of the hotel’s south wing for its Secretariat. Fewer than a third of
the grand hotel’s rooms remained for civilian guests and these were all
located in the center and north wings of the hotel on the first two
floors only.8
The hotel thus incongruously remained open to the public even
though it was ringed with barbed wire defenses, searchlights, machine
gun pits, checkpoints, roadblocks, armored cars, radio police vans, and
continuous patrols. Indeed, the heavy foot traffic of both British
officers coming in and out of headquarters and government officials
popping over from the Secretariat for a meal, a drink at the bar, or
tea in the lobby, created a frisson of importance and intrigue that
attracted diplomats, spies, journalists and, evidently, terrorists as
well who mixed with the hotel’s guests and other civilian visitors.9
For all these reasons——its name recognition as a Jerusalem
landmark, as the seat of British power in Palestine, and because of its
continued accessibility to the public——the King David, despite the two
hundred soldiers who worked there and the four hundred more bivouacked
 - 5 -

three hundred yards away,10 presented an irresistible target to the

Irgun.11
The Irgun, it should be explained, was only one of three illegal
Jewish movements active in Palestine at that time. The others were the
Haganah——Hebrew for defense——and the Lohamei Herut Yisrael——Freedom
Fighters for Israel, known to Jews by its Hebrew acronym, Lehi, and to
the British as the Stern Gang. The Haganah was the largest and most
restrained of the three. It was primarily a self-defense force,
conceived as the nucleus of a future Jewish army for a future Jewish
state.12 It would be incorrect to label the Haganah a terrorist
organization. However, both the Irgun and Lehi were. More to the
point, since the end of World War II all three organizations had been
temporarily united as the “Hebrew Resistance Movement” referred to by
the King David plague.
According to Begin, there was a fourth, equally critical,
objective in targeting the hotel. The previous month, in a major
British military operation against the Jewish leadership in Palestine,
the authorities had seized highly sensitive documents directly
implicating the Haganah and its political masters in the Jewish Agency
with the resistance movement. The Haganah believed that these papers
were stored in the British intelligence offices located in the King
David and hence hoped that the Irgun’s bombs would destroy the
incriminating material.

WERE WARNINGS ISSUED?

At approximately 11:45 A.M. on July 22nd 1946, a stolen delivery
truck pulled up to the basement service entrance at the front of the
King David Hotel. An Arab laborer wearing the blue overalls and robe
typical of such workers alighted and approached the clerk sitting at
the door who asked to see his delivery order. The Arab instead
produced a pistol and ordered the clerk into a nearby office where he
and his fellow employees were held at gunpoint. Meanwhile, a second
laborer strode from the truck into the basement and began gathering up
whatever other hotel staff he could find, who were then herded into the
kitchen and similarly kept under guard.
 - 6 -

The remaining four Irgun fighters now began to unload seven large
milk churns that they carried into La Regence, the hotel’s chic
nightclub located in the basement beneath its southwest wing. Each
contained approximately fifty pounds of high explosive. The
operation’s commander, known by his nom de guerre, Gideon, supervised
their placement alongside the columns supporting the six floors above.
When he was satisfied that they were properly positioned, Gideon
wrapped detonating cord around the churns, set the timing devices, and
activated the booby-trap mechanisms that the Irgun had designed to
prevent the bombs from being tampered with. Signs printed in English,
Arabic, and Hebrew warning “MINES——DO NOT TOUCH” were then attached to
each milk churn. It was just a few minutes before noon and everything
was going exactly according to plan.13
The Irgun team left La Regence and was proceeding back down the
corridor towards the basement exit when they were confronted by a
British Army officer. A fierce struggle ensued as two of the intruders
grappled with the young captain, who was dragged flailing and kicking
towards the kitchen. The bloodied officer, however, broke free of his
assailants and tried to escape up the service staircase to the hotel
lobby. One of the Irgun men raised his revolver and fired at point
blank range: the officer staggered up a few more steps and then
collapsed——mortally wounded.14 And, with that, the Irgun’s plan
unraveled.
An Irgun fighter guarding the hotel staff in the kitchen,
distracted by the sounds of the hallway scuffle and gun shot, failed to
notice that one of the clerks had inched his way over to an alarm
button set in the wall, which he was frantically pressing. The
distress signal was received at 12:15 P.M. in the Jerusalem District
Police Wireless Transmission Room, on the Mamillah Road, about a
quarter of a mile down the street from the King David, and a police
radio van was duly dispatched to the hotel.
By now, Military Police were rushing both downstairs and out of
the hotel’s main entrance towards the sunken driveway leading to the
service entrance. They arrived just as Gideon and his men emerged from
the basement. A gun battle erupted in which two of the assault team
 - 7 -

were fatally wounded. Forced to abandon the truck as bullets rained

down upon them, the men fled on foot through the hotel’s garden in the
direction of the Old City. They piled into a waiting taxi, that had
been parked in front of the French Consulate as a back-up escape
vehicle, and sped away.
At that moment, a small diversionary bomb left by another Irgun
unit outside an Arab-owned souvenir shop located next to the YMCA,
directly across the street from the King David’s southern wing,
exploded.15 Its purpose, Begin later explained was to “make a big noise
and disperse the people.”16 The device, however, was considerably more
powerful than the Irgun commander recalled or perhaps had even been
intended. It not only damaged the shop but also shattered the windows
of a passing Number Four bus: injuring several of its Arab passengers
who were taken to the Secretariat to be treated for their wounds. The
explosion also automatically triggered the police municipal alarm
system operated by the Jerusalem District Police Control Room.
Accordingly, sirens now blared throughout the downtown city center
warning that a terrorist attack had occurred.17 All vehicular traffic
immediately came to a stop and all government and military facilities
went into a lock-down mode.18
Meanwhile, a young woman had been waiting patiently by a public
telephone in an Armenian-owned pharmacy just down the road. Upon
hearing the sound of the diversionary bomb, she recalls immediately
dialing the King David’s number. Obeying the instructions that her
commander, had given her, Adina Hay-Nissan, a member of the Irgun’s
Jerusalem branch, spoke quickly in English, telling the switchboard
operator who answered her call: “This is the Jewish Resistance
Movement, we have planted bombs in the hotel. Please vacate it
immediately. You have been warned.” She repeated the message in
Hebrew and hung up. Hay-Nissan then ran through the side streets to
King George V Street where she entered a telephone booth and rang the
French Consulate. Speaking only in English this time, Hay-Nissan told
the person on the other end of the line to open all the windows in the
building so that they would not be shattered by an explosion. Finally,
she ran to a telephone booth across the street from the central bus
 - 8 -

station on Jaffa Road and called the Palestine Post’s office. Speaking
in Hebrew, she repeated her warning about an impending explosion at the
King David and told the operator to inform the hotel that it should be
evacuated immediately. Hay-Nissan believes that she placed the last
call no more than ten minutes after the diversionary bomb had
exploded.19
At 12:37 the bombs concealed inside the seven milk churns
detonated——ripping the stone façade from the King David and slicing
through the six floors of government and military offices that then
collapsed in a massive heap of shattered glass, broken masonry, and
crushed, lifeless bodies.20 “The chandelier fell down on my desk and
the room filled with dust and smoke,” the Chief Secretary of the
Palestine Government, Sir John Shaw, recalled of the explosion’s force.

I went out into the corridor and it was black as soot. You
couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. I walked long
[sic] the corridor, with one hand to guide me, when suddenly
I saw a yawning chasm under my feet, almost the whole depth
of the building, from the fourth floor to the ground.21

Ninety-one persons were killed and nearly seventy others injured.

The dead included 41 Arabs, 28 Britons, 17 Jews, as well as two
Armenians, a Russian, an Egyptian, and a Greek national. Among them
were sixteen senior government officials but many more low-level clerks
and typists, canteen workers and hotel employees, as well as five
members of the public who happened to be in the hotel or on the street
outside at the time of the explosion.22 A dozen of the slain were
women. Serving military personnel accounted for 13 of the fatalities.23
More than two-thirds of the Secretariat’s entire staff was either
killed or wounded.24 Hence, even if the King David was a legitimate
military target, the overwhelming majority of victims were clearly
civilians.
“Even the centuries-old turbulent annals of the Holy Land record
few crimes worse then the outrage perpetrated by the Irgun Zvai Leumi
on the 22nd July,” the High Commissioner for Palestine, General Sir Alan
Cunningham reported to the Colonial Secretary, George Hall.25 Indeed,
for decades to come the Irgun’s bombing of the King David Hotel would
hold the infamous distinction as the most lethal terrorist attack in
 - 9 -

history: surpassed only in 1983 with the suicide bomb attack on the
U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon by the same fanatical Shi’a
terrorist organization that Israel was battling when the plaque was
unveiled in 2006. It is perhaps because of this nefarious record that
the bombing of the King David Hotel has always been shrouded in
controversy.26 Blame for the horrific loss of life and catastrophic
injuries has been variously laid on the Irgun, the Haganah, the
British, and indeed on Shaw himself. It has been voiced by Briton,
Jew, and Arab alike as well as by those intent on proving that Jewish
terrorism has historically been no less sanguinary or abominable than
its modern-day Islamic counterpart.

WERE THE WARNINGS NOT RECEIVED OR IGNORED?

“Why was the King David Hotel not evacuated?” Begin asked six
years later in his memoir of the Irgun’s struggle, The Revolt. “In
this tragic chapter,” he claims, “there are certain facts which are
beyond all doubt”: first, that the Irgun’s warnings were inexplicably
ignored; and, second, that the hotel’s evacuation was specifically
prevented. “[T]here is reason to believe,” the Irgun leader continues,
“that a specific order was given, by someone in authority, that the
warning to leave the hotel should be ignored. Why was this stupid
27
order given? Who was responsible for it?” Although Begin provides no
answers, his version of events——as the controversy over the wording of
the anniversary plaque evidences——has assumed almost totemic importance
in the mythology of both the Irgun’s struggle and the history of pre-
state Israel.
The problem is that, like Begin’s own account of the bombing
itself, which claims that “twenty-five or twenty-seven minutes . . .
elapsed from the receipt of the warnings to the moment of the
explosion,”28 this purported statement of fact is not only inaccurate,
but also perpetuates an image of British official malfeasance that is
as false as it is self-serving.
Its provenance can be traced directly to the Irgun’s own
acknowledgement of responsibility for the bombing in the form of a
brief statement distributed to newspaper offices in Jerusalem the
 - 10 -

following night.29 The communiqué unabashedly asserts that “The tragedy

which occurred in the civil offices was not caused by Jewish soldiers
who carried out their duty with soldierly courage and self-sacrifice,
but by the British oppressors who disregarded the warning.” In support
of this claim, the Irgun stated that it had given ample warning to the
authorities via three telephone calls made between 12:10 and 12:15 as
well as from the small diversionary bomb that exploded across the
street from the hotel, which was intended “to notify the guests so that
they may leave the hotel and to passers-by in the neighbourhood.”
Accordingly, the document concludes, “if the announcement of the
British liars is correct, the big explosion occurred at 12.37, meaning
that they still had twenty minutes to clear the building. The
responsibility for the loss of life among the civil population
[therefore] falls entirely on them.”30
Even in Palestine’s pyretic atmosphere, with suspicion and hatred
of Britain already rampant, the Irgun’s shameless effort to absolve
itself by in effect blaming the victim, fell on mostly deaf ears.31 The
Hebrew press was particularly unsparing in the opprobrium heaped on the
Irgun.
None of this, however, mattered to Begin who brushed off much of
the criticism as “journalistic hysteria and self-abasement.”32 What did
wound him profoundly though was the totally unexpected, searing rebuke
delivered by the Haganah. Disregarding completely the fact that the
Haganah had both ordered and approved the King David operation in hopes
of destroying the documents recently seized by British authorities that
incriminated the entire Jewish leadership in underground violence, the
Haganah broadcast a statement over its clandestine radio station Kol
Israel on 23 July denouncing the “heavy loss of life caused by the
dissidents’ operation at the King David Hotel.”33 Hearing the report,
the Irgun commander was dumbstruck. As Begin pondered the matter, a
courier sent by Israel Galili, the Haganah’s commander, arrived at his
door bearing an urgent message requesting that they meet at 9:00 that
same evening. “What does this mean?” Begin recalled asking his Haganah
counterpart. “Don’t you know what and who caused the ‘heavy toll?’
Why do you denounce us? The plan was agreed between us, our men
 - 11 -

carried out their instructions precisely, the warning was given——why

don’t you tell the truth?”
Galili prevaricated and instead regaled Begin with a story about a
member of the Haganah’s Information Service who had learned of a
conversation that had supposedly taken place between a senior police
officer and a senior British official shortly before the bombing. Upon
being informed of the Irgun’s warning, this official——whom Galili’s
mysterious informant believed was the Chief Secretary——had replied that
he was not here to take orders from Jews, but to give them: thus
preventing the hotel’s evacuation.34 The same argument had been
presented to the MI5 station chief in Palestine and to his American
counterpart as well the previous day by the Haganah liaison officer.
It was dismissed out of hand by the MI5 station chief as a craven
effort “both to discredit Sir John Shaw, and to place on British heads
guilt for the deaths at the King David Hotel. The Agency are, in other
words,” he correctly intuited, “attempting in some measure to find
excuses for the Irgun Zvai Leumi.”35
Begin and his followers, however, swallowed the story whole.
Desperate to cleanse their blood-stained hands and deflect blame onto
any conveniently plausible target, the Irgun wrapped their arms around
this second-hand bit of tittle-tattle and embraced it with a fervor
that belied its questionable pedigree much less the motive of the
person purveying it.36
When, to mark the bombing’s first anniversary the Irgun issued a
pamphlet titled, “The Truth about the King David,” this canard was
prominently featured. “A representative of the ‘Resistance Movement’
told us privately,” the pamphlet claimed, “that Shaw replied to the
British Police Officer who informed him of our last telephonic warning,
‘I do not take orders from Jews——I give them orders.’”37
Nor did it take long for the allegation to appear in commercial
book form. In 1947, a book titled, Palestine Underground: The Story of
Jewish Resistance by J. Borisov, the pseudonym of an Irgun propagandist
whom, the book’s “Introduction” explains “was in a position to secure
first-hand information about the resistance,” was published in America.
Borisov cites “abundant evidence” that British officials ignored the
 - 12 -

Irgun’s warnings——but provides nothing but innuendo to support his

claim. Regardless, he brashly concludes that “The heavy loss of life
was caused exclusively by Sir John’s vain pride and obstinacy.”38
This charge was repeated in Britain the following year with the
publication of a revised edition of the 1938 book, The Rape of
Palestine. Written by William B. Ziff, a prominent, pro-Irgun Jewish-
American publisher, the new version included a footnote stating that
the Irgun gave the British a full thirty minutes to evacuate the King
David. It then alleges that “Shaw, the First Secretary of the
Administration, chose to forbid any of the other officials to leave the
building, though he himself did. The result was considerable loss of
life.”39
While there is no evidence that Shaw was aware of the Borisov
book, when The Rape of Palestine appeared, he sued Ziff and his British
publisher for libel. The case was heard in the High Court of Justice.
Investigators hired by the defense were unable to discover any evidence
or witnesses in Israel to support Ziff’s allegation. The court decided
the case in Shaw’s favor: ordering the author and his publisher to
withdraw the book from publication, “unreservedly” correct “all
imputations” of Shaw’s character, and apologize to the former Chief
Secretary for slandering him.40
None of this, however, deterred Begin and his apologists from
continuing to peddle this calumny——as the plaque outside the King David
Hotel today attests. For example, volume four of the Irgun’s official
history, Battle for Freedom: The Irgun Zvai Le’umi, published in 1975,
not only repeats the story and Shaw’s alleged reply——citing Galili as
the source——but also grafts onto it the additional allegation that the
Chief Secretary deliberately prevented the evacuation by ordering
British soldiers to open fire “in the direction of those trying to
leave” the hotel. The author, David Niv, does not explain how, if Shaw
had refused to communicate the warning to the rest of the Secretariat,
as is alleged, any of the staff would have known of the warning and
therefore attempted to leave the hotel?41
 - 13 -

THE WARNINGS WERE NEVER PASSED TO THE BRITISH AUTHORITIES

The truth of the matter is both more complex and more complicated
than any of the above explanations allow. While it is true that
warning calls to evacuate the King David were received by both the
hotel switchboard and an operator at the Palestine Post——a fact
confirmed at the time by U.S. intelligence officers in Jerusalem42——and
were in turn communicated to the hotel’s assistant manager, Emile
Soutter, the jumble of events and noise and confusion simultaneously
occurring inside and outside the hotel——including the shootout in the
basement between the Irgun assault team and British soldiers as well as
the running gun battle across the hotel’s garden that followed, the
diversionary explosion outside the souvenir shop across the street, and
the sirens sounding the terrorist alarm, only to shortly afterwards
issue the “all clear”——all conspired to ensure that word was never
passed to Shaw or any other person in authority in time.43
But, at the same time, the Irgun’s and Begin’s various claims to
have provided twenty-two, twenty-five, twenty-seven, and thirty minute
windows of time between the first call to the hotel and the bombs’
explosion have never been proven. Nor has the British Army’s official
histories’ assertion that the warnings were not received until either a
minute or even a second before the blast. Rather, the first warning
call appears to have been made to the hotel at 12:27——ten minutes
before the blast——with the second conveyed by the Palestine Post’s
operator to the King David’s switchboard at 12:32——five minutes before
the explosion.
Soutter was in fact made aware of both calls, but chose to take no
further action for two reasons. The first was that British government
offices in Jerusalem had long been subjected to bomb threats which had
proven to be nothing more than disruptive hoaxes. Hence, the assistant
hotel manager was not overly alarmed by the calls and, in any event,
did not wish to cause potential panic by ordering the building’s
evacuation. Soutter and his wife had themselves experienced two such
hoaxes the previous month while waiting in line at a nearby Barclay’s
Bank branch and then at the main post office on the Jaffa Road. Both
incidents had turned shambolic as patrons and employees alike had
 - 14 -

rushed for the exits and he did not want to be responsible for a
similar fiasco at the King David. It must also be said, that because
so many Jews either worked in the King David or regularly visited it,
there was a false sense of security that terrorists would never dare to
attack a target that might in any way cause Jewish casualties. This
proved to be a fatal miscalculation.44
Good intelligence, moreover, was often in woefully short supply in
Palestine.45 For example, although as recently as May 1946 the police
had warned of an Irgun plot to blow up the Secretariat, the vagueness
of the information coupled with the fact that since December 1945
several other such threats against the King David had failed to
materialize, led to its dismissal as well.46 Accordingly, the lack of
more specific intelligence, along with the conviction that the Irgun
would never undertake an operation that risked harming Jews, proved
disastrous.47
Ironically, the sad truth of the matter is that even if the King
David had been evacuated, as the Irgun had intended, the casualty toll
would likely have been even greater. Those passersby and personnel who
had already gathered in front the hotel before the main explosion were
mercilessly cut down by flying shards of glass and bits of masonry
hurled in their direction by the force of the blast. Accordingly, had
everyone in the building been standing on the pavement in front of the
YMCA across the street from the King David, still more people would
doubtless have been killed or hurt.48 Begin and the Irgun apparently
had neglected to consider this possibility in planning the attack.
Therefore, arguments that the Irgun gave warning of the impending
explosion and that the group’s proclaimed policy was to avoid harming
civilians, in the final analysis cannot absolve Begin and his
organization of responsibility for the loss of life and harm that their
bombs inflicted.
Finally, in the days preceding the bombing, British intelligence
may have been the victim of a colossally successful Irgun deception
operation. On 9 July, H.A.R. “Kim” Philby, a senior officer in the
Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), who would later be unmasked as a
Soviet spy, had written to the Foreign Office with information about an
 - 15 -

Irgun plot to attack Britain’s Minister to the Levant States based in

Beirut, his staff, and the legation buildings. According to the MI6
station chief in Lebanon, an Irgun hit team of recently demobilized
British Army soldiers had arrived the previous month for this purpose.49
The threat was taken sufficiently seriously by MI5 and the Palestine
Government to warrant sending both Sir Gyles Isham, its Jerusalem
station chief, and Arthur Giles, the head of the Palestine Police’s
equivalent of Special Branch, to Lebanon.50 Reflecting on this episode
nearly thirty years later, Isham was convinced that it was a deliberate
Irgun ploy to ensure that the country’s two most senior intelligence
officers would not be present in Palestine when the bombing on the King
David occurred.51 The threatened attacks in Lebanon never materialized
and nothing more was ever heard of that alleged plot.

IMPACT, EFFECTS AND FINAL THOUGHTS

The bombing of the King David evoked horror and umbrage back in
London. Addressing the House of Commons, Prime Minister Clement Attlee
termed it an “insane act of terrorism.” Daniel Lipson, a Jewish member
of the opposition Conservative Party, declared that the bombing brought
“dishonor and shame to the name of Jew”; while his fellow Tory, the
Earl of Winterton, described the Irgun “as vile and treacherous a foe
as the Nazis.”52 Comment in the press was identically condemnatory in
tone, but significantly different in substance. For the first time,
53
just as Begin had intended, doubt began to creep into the calculus of
whether Britain should persevere in its stoic quest to achieve a just
settlement of the Palestine problem.54 “Hopes that the teeth of
terrorism had been drawn by recent arrests and discoveries of hidden
arms dumps have been disappointed,” the Daily Telegraph lamented.55 The
Manchester Guardian likewise observed that the bombing “will be a shock
to those who imagined that the Government’s firmness had put a stop to
Jewish terrorism and had brought about an easier situation in
Palestine. In fact, the opposite is the truth . . . .”56 And, echoing
these same sentiments, the Times argued “it is more than ever clear
that the present situation in Palestine cannot be permitted to continue
. . .”57
 - 16 -

Despite——or perhaps because of——the tragic loss of life, so far as

the Irgun was concerned the bombing achieved its objective: attracting
worldwide attention to the group’s struggle and Palestine’s worsening
security. These reactions accorded perfectly with Begin’s strategy to
foster a climate of fear and alarm in Palestine so pervasive as to
undermine confidence both in Palestine and in Britain over the
government’s ability to maintain order. “The very existence of an
underground . . . must in the end undermine the prestige of a colonial
regime that lives by the legend of its omnipotence,” Begin famously
wrote. “Every attack which it fails to prevent is a blow at its
standing. Even if the attack does not succeed, it makes a dent in that
prestige, and that dent widens into a crack which is extended with
every succeeding attack.”58
An integral and innovative part of the Irgun’s strategy was
Begin’s use of daring and dramatic acts of violence——such as the King
David Hotel bombing——to attract international attention to Palestine
and thereby publicize simultaneously the Zionists’ grievances against
Britain and their claims for statehood. In an era long before the
advent of 24-hour cable news and instantaneous satellite-transmitted
broadcasts, the Irgun deliberately attempted to appeal to a worldwide
audience far beyond the immediate confines of the local struggle,
beyond even the ruling regime’s own homeland. In particular, the
Irgun——like its non-violent and less violent Zionist counterparts——
sought to generate sympathy and marshal support among powerful allies
such as the Jewish community in the United States and its elected
representatives in Congress and the White House, as well as among the
delegates to the fledgling United Nations Organization, to bring
pressure to bear on Britain to grant Jewish statehood.
The Irgun appears to have adopted and improved upon prior efforts
by both the Irish Republicans since the 1850s and Arab rebels in
Palestine during the 1930s respectively to “internationalize” their
struggles. Each sought to appeal to and mobilize the support (both
financial and material) of their constituencies——for the Irish, of
their ethnic brethren in the United States; and, for the Palestinian
Arabs in surrounding countries.59 The success of the Irgun’s further
 - 17 -

use of this strategy, Begin claims, may be seen in the paucity of

global coverage afforded to the civil war that had erupted in Greece
after the Second World War, compared to that devoted to events in
Palestine. Palestine, he wrote, had undeniably become a “centre of
world interest. The revolt had made it so. It is a fact,” Begin
maintains,

that no partisan struggle had been so publicized throughout

the world as was ours . . . The reports on our operations,
under screaming headlines, covered the front pages of
newspapers everywhere, particularly in the United States . .
. The interest of the newspapers is the measure of the
interest of the public. And the public——not only Jews but
non-Jews too——were manifestly interested in the blows we were
striking in Eretz Israel.60

The articulation of Begin’s strategy in his book, The Revolt,

first published in English in 1951, thus represents an important
milestone in the evolution and “internationalization” of terrorism.61
Under his leadership, the Irgun deliberately sought an audiences far
beyond the geographical confines of their campaign in Palestine. The
Irgun’s violence was specifically designed to attract attention in New
York and Washington and Paris and Moscow as well as in London and
Jerusalem. Begin’s example appears to have subsequently resonated with
other peoples elsewhere struggling against Western colonial domination
and continued occupation of their lands in the decade following World
War II. The leader of the anti-British guerrilla campaign in Cyprus,
General George Grivas, adopted an identical strategy. Although there
is no evidence that he ever read Begin’s book or had studied the
Irgun’s campaign, the parallels between the two are unmistakable.62 The
internationalization of Palestinian Arab terrorism that occurred in the
1960s and 1970s would also appear to owe something to the quest for
international attention and recognition that the Irgun’s own terrorist
campaign pioneered a quarter of a century earlier.63 And, the Brazilian
revolutionary theorist Carlos Marighela’s famous “Mini-Manual,” the
Handbook of Urban Guerrilla War,64 which was essential reading for the
variety of left-wing terrorist organizations that arose both in Latin
American and Western Europe during the 1960s and 1970s, embodies
Begin’s strategy of provoking the security forces in hopes of
 - 18 -

alienating the population from the authorities. More recently, when

U.S. military forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 they found a copy of
Begin’s seminal work, The Revolt, along with other books about the
Jewish struggle and the Irgun’s transformation from terrorist group
pariah to a respectable political party, in the well-stocked library
that al Qaeda maintained at one of its training facilities in that
country.65

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“A Senseless Outrage,” Times, 23 July 1946

al-Bahri, Nasser with Malbrunot, Georges. Guarding Bin Laden: My Life

in al-Qaeda. Great Britain: Tim Man Press, 2013

Bell, J. Bowyer. Terror Out of Zion: Irgun Zvai Leumi, LEHI, and the
Palestine Underground, 1929-1949. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977

Begin, Menachem. The Revolt: Story of the Irgun. New York: Henry
Schuman, 1951

Begin, Menachem. The Revolt: Story of the Irgun. Jerusalem: Steimatzky,

1977

Bethell, Nicholas. The Palestine Triangle: The Struggle between the

British, the Jews, and the Arabs 1935-48. London: Andrew Deutsch,
1979

Borisov, J. Palestine Underground: The Story of the Jewish Resistance.

Philadelphia: Judea, 1947

Briscoe, Robert (with Hatch, Alden). For The Life of Me. Boston &
Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1958

Brutton, Philip. A Captain’s Mandate Palestine: 1946-48. London: Leo

Cooper, 1996

Burleigh, Michael. Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism. New

York: HarperCollins, 2009.

Cavendish, Anthony. Inside Intelligence. London: Collins, 1990.

Clarke, Thurston. By Blood and Fire: The Attack on the King David
Hotel. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1981
 - 19 -

Cohen, Michael J. Palestine: Retreat from the Mandate——The making of

British policy, 1936-45. London: Paul Elek, 1978

Comay, Joan. “King of them all: 50 years of the King David Hotel,”
Jerusalem Post International Edition, 18 October 1981

Coogan, Tim Pat. The IRA: A History. Niwot, Colorado: Roberts Rinehart,
1993

Clutterbuck, Lindsay. “The Progenitors of Terrorism: Russian

Revolutionaries or Extreme Irish Republicans?” Terrorism and
Political Violence, vol. 16, no. 1 (Spring 2004)

“Crisis In Palestine,” Manchester Guardian, 23 July 1946.

Dinur, Ben-Zion. Sefer Toldo Ha-Haganah (A History of the Haganah).

Vol. 1. Tel Aviv: Ma’arhot, 1954-1972

Charles Foley (ed.), The Memoirs of General Grivas (London: London:

Longmans, 1964)

French, David. The British Way in Counterinsurgency 1945-1967. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2011

Golan, Aviezer and Shlomo Nakdimon. Begin. Jerusalem: Edanim, 1978

Grivas, General (trans. A. A. Pallis). Guerrilla Warfare and Eoka’s

Struggle. London: Longmans, 1964

Hacker, Frederick J. Crusaders, Criminals, Crazies: Terror and

Terrorism in Our Time. New York: W. W. Norton, 1976

How The Terrorists Got In; Men Disguised as Bedouins ‘Deliver the
Milk’,” Manchester Guardian, 23 July 1946; “Official Army H.Q.
Account,” Palestine Post, 23 July 1946

“La Regence”; Official Army H.Q. Account,” Palestine Post, 23 July 1946

Parker, Ned and Farrell, Stephen. ”British anger at terror

celebration,” terror celebration,” Times (London), 20 July 2006

Niv, David. Ma’archot Ha-Irgun Ha-Zvai Ha-Leumi (Battle for Freedom:

The Irgun Zvai Leumi). Vols. 1-5. Tel Aviv: Klausner Institute, 1975

Prince-Gibson, Eetta. “Reflective Truth,” Jerusalem Post, 26 July 2006

Marighela, Carlos (trans. John Butt and Rosemary Sheed). For the
Liberation of Brazil. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971

“Plain Murder,” Daily Telegraph, 23 July 1946

 - 20 -

Porath, Y. The Palestinian Arab National Movement 1929-1939: From Riots

to Rebellion, vol. ii 1929-1939. London: Frank Cass, 1977

Roman, Yadin. “The Grand Hotel of Jersualem,” Eretz: The Magazine Of

Israel, no. 107 (February 2007)

Rose, Norman. ‘A Senseless, Squalid War’: Voices from Palestine 1945-

1948. London: Bodley Head, 2009Trevor, Under The White Paper,

Shipler, David K. “Ex-Guerrillas Reminisce at the King David Hotel,”

New York Times 26 September 1981

Trevor, Daphne. Under the White Paper: Some Aspects of British

Administration in Palestine from 1939-1947. Jerusalem: The Jerusalem
Press, 1948

Walton, Calder. Empire Of Secrets: British Intelligence, The Cold War

And The Twilight Of Empire. London: Harper Press, 2013

Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. New
York: Knopf, 2006

1
Quoted in Ned Parker and Stephen Farrell, ”British anger at
terror celebration,” Times (London), 20 July 2006.
2
Ibid., and Eetta Prince-Gibson, “Reflective Truth,” Jerusalem
Post, 26 July 2006.
3
Photograph of the current plaque by the author, July 2007.
4
Prince-Gibson, “Reflective Truth.”
5
Quoted in Parker and Farrell, ”British anger at terror
celebration.”
6
Begin, The Revolt, p. 219. See also, Bethell, The Palestine
Triangle, p. 261.
7
Yadin Roman, “The Grand Hotel of Jersualem,” Eretz: The Magazine
Of Israel, no. 107 (February 2007), p. 33.
8
Clarke, By Blood & Fire, p. 37. See also, Joan Comay, “King of
them all: 50 years of the King David Hotel,” Jerusalem Post
International Edition, 18 October 1981; Roman, “The Grand Hotel of
Jersualem,” p. 35; and Sherman, Mandate Days, p. 165.
9
Ibid., pp. 36-38 & 48-49; and, Montefiore, Jerusalem, p. 477.
10
Clarke, By Blood & Fire, p. 29.
 - 21 -

11
Begin, The Revolt, p. 212; and, Aviezer and Nakdimon, Begin, p.
115.
12
See the speech by Eliahu Golomb, the “father” of the Haganah and
its first commander, who guided its transformation from an underground
fighting force into a full-fledged army quoted in Ben-Zion Dinur, Sefer
Toldot Ha-Haganah (History of the Haganah) (Tel Aviv, 1954–1972), vol.
i, p. 154.

13
NA CO 537/2290 Letter, Assistant Inspector-General J.P.I. Fforde
to Chief Secretary, 16 August 1946. See also, SAMEC Cunningham Papers
I/1 Telegram, Barker to Hall, 22 July 1946; SAMEC Philip Morris Papers
II/1 “La Regence,” 13 December 1946; “How The Terrorists Got In; Men
Disguised as Bedouins ‘Deliver the Milk’,” Manchester Guardian, 23 July
1946; “Official Army H.Q. Account,” Palestine Post, 23 July 1946;
Begin, The Revolt, pp. 218-219; Bethell, The Palestine Triangle, pp.
258-259; Clarke, By Blood & Fire, pp. 163-166, 169, & 180-181; and,
Niv, Ma’archot Ha-Irgun, vol. iv, pp. 279-280.
14
NA CO 537/2290 Letter, Fforde to Shaw, 16 August 1946; ibid.,
Letter, Cunningham to Hall, 20 December 1946; SAMEC Cunningham Papers
I/1 Telegram, Barker to Hall, 22 July 1946; SAMEC Philip Morris Papers
II/1 “La Regence”; Official Army H.Q. Account,” Palestine Post, 23 July
1946; Bethell, The Palestine Triangle, p. 259; Clarke, By Blood & Fire,
pp. 170, 172-176, & 233; and, Niv, Ma’archot Ha-Irgun, vol. iv, p. 279.
15
NA CO 537/2290 Letter, Fforde to Shaw, 16 August 1946; Brutton,
A Captain’s Mandate, pp. 46-47; and, Clarke, By Blood & Fire, pp. 188-
189.
16
Quoted in Bethell, The Palestine Triangle, p. 260.
17
NA CO 537/2290 Letter, Fforde to Shaw, 16 August 1946; Aviezer
and Nakdimon, Begin, p. 116; Bethell, The Palestine Triangle, pp. 261-
262; and, Clarke, By Blood & Fire, pp. 188-189, 196-199 & 206-207.
18
Aviezer and Nakdimon, Begin, p. 116.
19
Quoted in Bethell, The Palestine Triangle, p. 261. See also,
Shipler, “Ex-Guerrillas Reminisce at the King David Hotel.”
 - 22 -

20
Ibid.; Bell, Terror Out Of Zion, pp. 171-172; Clarke, By Blood &
Fire, pp. 200, 203-204; “41 Dead, 53 Injured, 52 Missing In Terrorist
Attack on Secretariat,” Palestine Post, 23 July 1946; and, Niv,
Ma’archot Ha-Irgun, vol. iv, pp. 280-282.
21
Quoted in Bethell, The Palestine Triangle, pp. 262-263.
22
NA CO 537/2290 Letter, Fforde to Shaw, 16 August 1946.
23
NA CO 537/2290 Letter, Fforde to Shaw, 16 August 1946; and, RH
Papers of Sir John Shaw Mss. Brit. Emp. S.456 containing Palestine
Gazette, No. 150,, 6 August 1946.
24
RH Papers of Sir Robert Scott Mss. British Empire S.417(4)
Letter, Scott to Mrs. Robert Scott (his mother), 28 July 1946; and NA
CO 537/1708 Telegram, Cunningham to Hall, 3 August 1946.
25
NA CO 537/1708 Telegram, Cunningham to Hall, 3 August 1946.
26
See, for instance, David K. Shipler, “Ex-Guerrillas Reminisce at
the King David Hotel,” New York Times 26 September 1981.
27
Quoted in Begin, The Revolt, pp. 220-221.
28
Ibid., p. 221.
29
NARA RG 226 OSS 108A/NN3-226/92-1 Box 19, File 22, Folder 3
JERU-004, Notes on the King David Hotel Bombing, 24 July 1946. See
also, NA WO 261/562 HQ British Troops in Palestine & Transjordan, G
Branch, Historical Record, July-September 1946: The Attack on the King
David Hotel——22 July 1946; NA KV 5/36 Extract: Appreciation of
situation Palestine, 24 July 1946; and, Ibid., Letter, S. Prescott for
DSO, HQ Palestine, to Kellar, 27 July 1946.
30
NA KV 5/36 Irgun Issues “Communique On Attack,” (no date).
31
See NARA RG 226 OSS 108A/NN3-226/92-1 Box 19, File 22, Folder 3
JERU-004, Report No. 518 First Reaction To Monday’s Outrage, 23 July
1946; Ibid., OSS Notes on the King David Hotel Bombing, 24 July 1946;
NA CO 537/1715 Letter, Robertson to Trafford-Smith, 29 July 1946; and,
Trevor, Under The White Paper, p. 228.
32
Begin, The Revolt, p. 223.
33
Quoted in Begin, The Revolt, pp. 223-224. See also, Clarke, By
Blood & Fire, p. 243.
 - 23 -

34
Ibid., p. 224. See also, Bethell, The Palestine Triangle, p.
263; Clarke, By Blood & Fire, p. 245; Aviezer and Nakdimon, Begin, p.
118; Niv, Ma’archot Ha-Irgun, vol. iv, p. 282
35
KV 2/1435 Letter, Robertson to Trafford Smith, 8 August 1946.
Interestingly, U.S. intelligence officers in Palestine reported having
been approached by the “Jewish Agency’s Intelligence Service” with the
same exculpatory information about the bombing. See NARA RG 226 OSS
108A/NN3-226-92-1 Box 19, File 22, Folder 3 GP Palestine Report No. 535
Jewish Agency Intelligence Department Working On Evidence That [sic]
Secretariat Was Duly Warned, 31 July 1946.
36
NA 5/36 Palestine: Jewish Reaction to blowing up of King David
Hotel, 12 August 1946.
37
Quoted in RH Catling Papers Memorandum On Jewish National
Institutions In Acts Of Violence, 1947, Appendix LVa, Letter J.P.I.
Fforde, Assistant Inspector General, CID to Sir Henry Gurney, Chief
Secretary, July 1947 containing “The Truth about the King David,”
National Military Organisation, 22 July 1947.
38
Quoted in Borisov, Palestine Underground, p. 133.
39
William B. Ziff, The Rape Of Palestine (London: St. Botolph’s,
1948), p. 486.
40
RH Papers of Sir John Shaw High Court of Justice, King’s Bench
Division, The Hon. Mr. Justin Hilberry 1948 S.No. 3790 Sir John Shaw
(P) v. Wm. B. Ziff, Donald George Port trading as Jason Press and S.T.
Botolphs Publishing Co., Ltd., 12 April 1949. See also, Cavendish,
Inside Intelligence, p. 19; Clarke, By Blood & Fire, pp. 190-191 & 260;
and, Rose, “A Senseless, Squalid War,” pp. 115-116.
41
Niv, Ma’archot Ha-Irgun Ha-Zvai Ha-Le’umi, vol. iv, pp. 282-283.
42
NARA RG 226 OSS 108A/NN3-226/92-1 Box 19, File 22, Folder 3
JERU-004, Notes on the King David Hotel Bombing, 24 July 1946.
43
Clarke, By Blood & Fire, pp. 204-205 & 211-213.
44
SAMEC Papers of Lt. Gen. John D’Arcy GB165-0075 Letter, Barker
to D’Arcy, 29 July 1946; and, Clarke, By Blood & Fire, pp. 203-206 &
211-213.
45
French, The British Way in Counterinsurgency, p. 33
 - 24 -

46
See IWM Rymer-Jones Papers, pp. 132, 143-144 & 149; and, SAMEC
Papers of Richard Crossman GB165-008 Letter, Shaw to Crossman, 2 August
1946.
47
NA CAB 128/6 C.m. (46) 75th Conclusions, 30 July 1946; SAMEC
D’Arcy Papers Letter, Barker to D’Arcy, 29 July 1946; and, Ibid.,
Crossman Papers Letter, Shaw to Crossman, 2 August 1946.
48
NA CO 537/2290 Letter, Fforde to Shaw, 16 August 1946; and,
ibid., Letter, Cunningham to Hall, 20 December 1946. See also, Clarke,
By Blood & Fire, p. 222; and, Rose, “A Senseless, Squalid War,” p. 116.
49
NA KV 5/36 Letter, Philby to Bromley, 8 July 1946; Ibid.,
Foreign Office to Shone, 19 July 1946; and, Ibid., Shone to Foreign
Office, 21 July 1946.
50
Ibid., Foreign Office to Shone, 19 July 1946.
51
Northamptonshire Record Office, Papers of Sir Gyles Isham I/184
Letter, Islam to Shaw, 15 January 1972 quoted in Wagner, “Britain and
the Jewish Underground, 1944-46,” p. 166.
52
Debates, House of Commons, vol. 425, cols. 1877-1880, 23 July
1946.
53
Begin, The Revolt, p. 52.
54
See, for instance, NA WO 261/562 Attitude In England To The
Palestine Problem in Fortnightly Intelligence Newsletter No. 20. HQ,
Palestine & Transjordan, 22 July-4 August 1946; and, Sherman, Mandate
Days, p. 183.
55
“Plain Murder,” Daily Telegraph, 23 July 1946.
56
“Crisis In Palestine,” Manchester Guardian, 23 July 1946.
57
“A Senseless Outrage,” Times, 23 July 1946.
58
Ibid., p. 52.
59
See Robert Briscoe (with Alden Hatch), For The Life of Me
(Boston & Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1958), pp. 263-266 & 294;
Michael Burleigh, Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism (New
York: HarperCollins, 2009), p. 3; Michael J. Cohen, Palestine: Retreat
from the Mandate——The making of British policy, 1936-45 (London: Paul
Elek, 1978), pp. 18-31 & 54-63; Lindsay Clutterbuck, “The Progenitors
of Terrorism: Russian Revolutionaries or Extreme Irish Republicans?”
 - 25 -

Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 16, no. 1 (Spring 2004), p. 163;
Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA: A History (Niwot, Colorado: Roberts Rinehart,
1993), p. 11; Y. Porath, The Palestinian Arab National Movement 1929-
1939: From Riots to Rebellion, vol. ii 1929-1939 (London: Frank Cass,
1977), pp. 199-216; and, Calder Walton, Empire Of Secrets: British
Intelligence, The Cold War And The Twilight Of Empire (London: Harper
Press, 2013), p. 101.
60
Begin, The Revolt, pp. 54-5.
61
Menachem Begin, The Revolt: Story Of The Irgun (New York: Henry
Schuman: 1951).
62
Charles Foley (ed.), The Memoirs of General Grivas (London:
London: Longmans, 1964), passim; and, General Grivas (trans. A. A.
Pallis), Guerrilla Warfare and Eoka’s Struggle (London: Longmans,
1964), passim.
63
Frederick J. Hacker, Crusaders, Criminals, Crazies: Terror and
Terrorism in Our Time (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), pp. 72-73.
64
Carlos Marighela (trans. John Butt and Rosemary Sheed), For the
Liberation of Brazil (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), pp. 61-97.
65
Nasser al-Bahri with Georges Malbrunot, Guarding Bin Laden: My
Life in al-Qaeda (Great Britain: Tim Man Press, 2013) p. 77 ; and,
Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New
York: Knopf, 2006), p. 303.