In the late morning hours of July 22nd 1946, a stolen truck pulled into the service entrance of King David Hotel in Al-Quds, Palestine (the correct name for Jerusalem). It brought inside six terrorists. Two armed terrorists walked into the lobby and basement and herded the hotel staff into a kitchen. The other four terrorists carried in explosives laden in milk churns to various support pillars that held up the 6-storey building.
Confronted by a British military officer, and then the Military Police, the terrorists shot and fought their way out to a getaway car parked outside the French Consulate a few blocks away (one was shot dead). Before the main bombing, a diversionary blast shook Al-Quds around the hotel. Roughly 51 minutes later, the King David Hotel was bombed, killing 91 people and injuring 46 more.
It was Menachim Begin’s and Irgun’s one of many terrorist acts in Palestine and abroad. His organisation Irgun Zvai Le’umi was designated as a terror group by British intelligence agencies including the Mi5. Irgun, as an organised group, would later evolve into the Likud party, the party of Benjamin Netanyahu.
What was King David Hotel?
Back when it was Mandatory Palestine, King David Hotel was the epicentre of political and social life for European, Jewish, and Arabian elite. The basement night club, La Regence, teemed with foreign dignitaries, celebutantes, diplomats, and spies. Regional politics were shaped in the hotel’s luxurious Grand Lobby, often with tea and biscuits.
Upstairs, it housed the British army headquarters (fourth floor), British government secretariat, military and foreign intelligence services, and administrative services. The Mandate Palestine government secretariat ran from the hotel’s first and top three floors in the South wing. There was a constant flow of British military officers coming in and leaving, to work and dine. Despite being a ‘hotel’ only a small section of two floors was open for civilian guests.
King David Hotel was thus the beating heart of the Palestine Mandate, and the British power controlling it. It was widely considered the safest place in the entire Levant (barbed wires, constant MP patrols, gun pits, armoured cars) and anybody who was someone knew that you couldn’t go higher in either Palestine or Transjordan, the Seat of Power.
What was the British response?
Short: Gave Menachem Begin a clean chit, because he was a Zionist, of course. And sixty years later, only 10% of British MPs denounced it.
The immediate British reaction to the bombing was brutal. Mandate Palestine police and British army brigades cordoned off access to Al-Quds and started a combing operation in a city already reeling with political and social crises, but the Irgun terrorists had escaped.
Unlike the atrocities of ISIS that are unequivocally wrong, Irgun’s terrorism was apparently OK. Zionist newspapers around the world started writing of ‘advance warning’ being given (roughly 20 minutes) by their brave Irgun terrorists.
What were these advance warnings? A series of MORE BOMBS were exploded in the buildings surrounding the King David Hotel, just minutes prior to the main bombing. A frantic phone call by a female terrorist accomplice was made to the hotel’s reception to vacate the building. Israeli academics like Ms Anat Berko write on Muslim women in terror attacks, but gloss over Zionist women, a fact confirmed by the British Field Marshal Lord Montgomery.
So the Zionists were defending Irgun’s terrorism by saying that they, in fact, exploded MORE bombs (more terrorism) in civilian areas. These insane mental gymnastics are continued even today, becoming an official stance of the Israeli government. A popular call is that the British Chief Secretary, Sir John Shaw, knowingly did not vacate the Hotel because he wanted to defame the brave Irgun terrorists.
We’re making same major leaps of logic here. The Zionists started a defamation campaign against Mr. Shaw, who clearly explained that no message had been received by any British officer in authority (and demanded why the Western media was supporting the narrative that bombing was OK if the hotel was evacuated). Many other British officers were personally targeted.
So the Irgun terrorists parcelled a mail bomb to Sir John Shaw, in a failed bid to assassinate him. Murder of foreign officers in foreign territories is a specialty of Zionist Israel, so more terrorism came as no surprise.
- Ismail Haniyeh (Palestine) in Tehran, Iran in 2024
- Qassem Soleimani (Iran) in Baghdad, Iraq in 2020
- M. Reza Zahedi (Iran) in Damascus, Syria in 2024
- Imad Mughniyeh (Lebanon) in Damascus, Syria in 2008
- Khalil Ibrahim Al-Wazir (Palestine) in Tunis in 1988
- Mahmoud al-Mabhouh (Palestine) in Dubai, UAE in 2010.
In 2006, when the world was reeling from the Second Lebanon War, the Zionists placed a commemorative plaque at the King David Hotel, celebrating the Zionist terrorism that had killed 91 people (the plaque was later revised to mention 92).
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.”
In the morning hours of 24 July, 2006, the bill EDM 2624 was discussed in the British Parliament to denounce Israel’s plaque and commemoration of the terror attack on the British people. Interestingly, only 64 MPs signed it, in a house of 646+ MPs. Only 10% of British MPs denounced Israel’s terrorism.
I’m not going to be click-baity here and say that it probably wasn’t a fully attended session. But the message it sends is clear.
We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated.
British Parliament bill EDM 2624, tabled by Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) of the Conservative Party.
So brazen was the Zionist’s projection of absolute power in the world that Menachem Begin, despite bombing the British army and government, was allowed to enter the UK in 1972, prior to becoming the Prime Minister. He faced no criminal trial for his terrorism, despite being classified by the Mi5 as one, an odd luxury indeed.
Who was Menahcem Begin?
Born to a Zionist family in Belorussia, and educated in Warsaw, Menachem Begin was a hardliner Zionist with a long political and terrorism career that spanned the entire Palestine. A charismatic orator, Begin rose to fame in Betar, a Latvian Zionist Youth organisation. He was later arrested for Zionist dissent by the Soviet secret police, until his release was secured in the Polish-Soviet Sikorski-Mayski agreement.
After leaving the Polish army in 1941, Begin moved to Palestine and began organising violent resistance to British control, in a bid to forcefully establish Israel as a sole state controlled by Zionists. He joined the Irgun, one of the three major Zionist terror organisations. Irgun organised shootings, bombings, and mass killings across Palestine as a ‘Zionist underground’ resistance to Imperial Britain.
The tales of Irgun’s and Menachem’s terrorism (I’m only using Western definitions here) are far too many to contain in a single blog (more blogs will follow). Begin, however, rose through the ranks quickly to become Irgun’s leader and mastermind. By 1948 (two years after King David Hotel bombing), Begin started his political career (after terrorising the British into leaving) as founder of the ‘Herut’ party – that party today has evolved to Likud, Israel’s current governing party.
Although his early political career was spent on the opposition benches of the Knesset, by 1977, Begin’s party won Israel’s general elections in a landslide, handing him the Prime Ministership. That’s right – his terrorism, bombings, and mass slayings were supported and voted by the Zionists of Israel.
In 1979, in recognition of his “peace” efforts with Egypt (and typical Western washing of Zionist terrorism), Menachem Begin was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (shared with Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat). While the terms of this treaty are commendable, including the withdrawl of Israeli troops from the Sinai Peninsula and cessation of Egyptian blockade of trade vessels in the Strait of Tiran, it devalues the very idea of Nobel Peace prize.
Or maybe we were all fooled into thinking Nobel Peace prizes meant anything at all? The Irgun’s bombing of King David Hotel would go onto become the ‘model‘ for many terrorism acts to follow, a hallmark Zionist contribution to the world.
Maybe it’s just one of those things. If you’re a Zionist, international laws and anti-terrorism operations do not apply to you. A Zionist can bomb cities, mount armed resistance, and engage in mass terror slaughters, and still receive standing ovations in the United States, whether in 1978 or 2024.
If you ask any Western source about who Irgun or Menachem Begin were, you’ll be told that they were a paramilitary group and freedom fighter (they will sprinkle the word ‘controversial’ so it’s OK, as if Hamas can’t be described with those exact words). And then you’ll be told to shut up and enjoy Fish & Chips, because this is a rules-based world, no better explained than by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
Have you ever seen these rules? No? … Because if no one has seen these rules, it means that those who talk about them can come up with these rules from case to case in a way that suits their interests.
Vladimir Putin, President of Russia
I’d like to add in a beautiful comparison that an early reviewer gave me. “If there was some Muslim terrorist group involved, rather than Irgun, Hollywood would have made a thriller on the event.”
My next post explores Menachem Begin’s other terrorism acts, including the Deir Yassin massacre, where Irgun and other Zionist terror groups brutally slaughtered over 107 Palestinian villagers, including women and children. Atrocities that make ISIS look like playground amateurs. Stay tuned – subscribe to my e-mail list, or follow me on Twitter.
Check out my earlier post on how Israel’s culling of Gazan Muslims has direct parallels to Imperial Britain’s culling of Indian Muslims.
I’m an author & journalist from Islamabad, Pakistan. I explore authentic, credible stories of colonialism and modern-day Imperialism from the West. I also write stories of marginalised, unheard voices that live in slums and indigence. Voices that are rarely heard in the modern literature.
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