// essays //
May 18, 2015
Terrorism Then and Now:
The Bombing of the King David Hotel
Dore Feith
Terrorism has a bad name. Some people use the word to refer to any act of violence against civilians; governments tend to use it to define the acts of enemies that they seek to delegitimize. But beyond its simple meaning—the use of violence to intimidate or coerce, usually for political purposes—the word has been used in a variety of contexts, and has accidentally grouped together events that otherwise bear little in common with one another.
A particular case study of the uses of “terrorism” is the Jerusalem King David Hotel bombing in 1946, executed by the Irgun Zvai Leumi—the National Military Organization, the second largest underground military organization during the British Mandate—under the leadership of Menachem Begin (similarly interesting is the IRA’s campaign of guerrilla warfare, but this essay will be limited to the analysis of only one act). Though that attack was called terrorism throughout much of the world, its specific contours are different from those of more recent attacks that carry the name of terrorism, such as 9/11, perhaps the most famous of recent years, but also including the Boston Marathon bombing, and the Tamil Tigers’ massacre of thirty-three Buddhist monks in 1987. A study of what happened at the King David may prove useful in identifying what kinds of actions should or should not be classified as acts of terrorism today.
The day after the King David bombing, Britain’s Prime Minister Clement Attlee labeled it an “insane act of terrorism,” while the Manchester Guardian declared it “Jewish terrorism.” Before the 1940s, the word terrorist had been used to refer to the Jacobins of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror and in the late nineteenth century to describe Russian anarchists. But in considering what is terrorism and what is not, it helps to look at the specifics of the incident, the goals of the attackers, and the context in which the attack took place.
Today, art galleries and stores selling Judaica and jewelry surround the King David Hotel, which sits on a hill overlooking Jerusalem’s Old City to its east. In the summer of 1946, however, machine gun installments, sandbags, and armored vehicles surrounded its neighborhood. Next to the hotel were the headquarters of the British Military Police and the Special Investigation Bureau. The King David’s southern wing—the Irgun’s target—did not function as a hotel; it instead housed the offices of the British military’s General Headquarters in Palestine and those of the Secretariat (the civil administration). Those offices made the King David a legitimate military target according to the International Committee of the Red Cross’s widely accepted interpretation of the Geneva Convention’s Article 52. Begin openly called for a revolt against the British more than two years before the attack; it should not have—and, judging from their security preparations, did not—come as a surprise to the British that their command center would be subject to enemy assault, especially considering that just two weeks prior British soldiers raided the headquarters of the Jewish Agency.
Begin writes in his memoir The Revolt that the primary purpose of targeting the offices in the King David was to destroy the documents seized from the Jewish Agency. By contrast, more recent acts of terror have sought to instill fear in a civilian population by killing and wounding large numbers of people. In a 2012 post on a prominent Jihadist website, Abu Asma’ al-Cubi called for Mujahedeen to carry weapons, “enter public places where there are Christians, and kill.” The Irgun, on the other hand, never called for the mass killing of British civilians. As presented in Begin’s Revolt, a totally successful operation against the King David would have resulted in no loss of life, the destruction of the building’s southern wing, and with it, the valuable documents seized in the raids against the Jewish Agency. Compare this to 9/11, when, according the 9/11 Commission Report, the hijackers specifically targeted transcontinental flights because they had more jet fuel and would therefore create a larger explosion—and, consequently, more death and destruction—upon impact.
Do those who we call terrorists today delay their attacks, or inform the enemy of them in advance, in order to save their lives? In his memoir, Begin explains that the plan was to launch the attack at 11 a.m. when the café underneath the Secretariat and military headquarters would be most empty, but last-minute tactical issues delayed the operation for an hour. Begin also describes the debate regarding how much time should pass between when the explosives are planted and when they are detonated:
A particular case study of the uses of “terrorism” is the Jerusalem King David Hotel bombing in 1946, executed by the Irgun Zvai Leumi—the National Military Organization, the second largest underground military organization during the British Mandate—under the leadership of Menachem Begin (similarly interesting is the IRA’s campaign of guerrilla warfare, but this essay will be limited to the analysis of only one act). Though that attack was called terrorism throughout much of the world, its specific contours are different from those of more recent attacks that carry the name of terrorism, such as 9/11, perhaps the most famous of recent years, but also including the Boston Marathon bombing, and the Tamil Tigers’ massacre of thirty-three Buddhist monks in 1987. A study of what happened at the King David may prove useful in identifying what kinds of actions should or should not be classified as acts of terrorism today.
The day after the King David bombing, Britain’s Prime Minister Clement Attlee labeled it an “insane act of terrorism,” while the Manchester Guardian declared it “Jewish terrorism.” Before the 1940s, the word terrorist had been used to refer to the Jacobins of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror and in the late nineteenth century to describe Russian anarchists. But in considering what is terrorism and what is not, it helps to look at the specifics of the incident, the goals of the attackers, and the context in which the attack took place.
Today, art galleries and stores selling Judaica and jewelry surround the King David Hotel, which sits on a hill overlooking Jerusalem’s Old City to its east. In the summer of 1946, however, machine gun installments, sandbags, and armored vehicles surrounded its neighborhood. Next to the hotel were the headquarters of the British Military Police and the Special Investigation Bureau. The King David’s southern wing—the Irgun’s target—did not function as a hotel; it instead housed the offices of the British military’s General Headquarters in Palestine and those of the Secretariat (the civil administration). Those offices made the King David a legitimate military target according to the International Committee of the Red Cross’s widely accepted interpretation of the Geneva Convention’s Article 52. Begin openly called for a revolt against the British more than two years before the attack; it should not have—and, judging from their security preparations, did not—come as a surprise to the British that their command center would be subject to enemy assault, especially considering that just two weeks prior British soldiers raided the headquarters of the Jewish Agency.
Begin writes in his memoir The Revolt that the primary purpose of targeting the offices in the King David was to destroy the documents seized from the Jewish Agency. By contrast, more recent acts of terror have sought to instill fear in a civilian population by killing and wounding large numbers of people. In a 2012 post on a prominent Jihadist website, Abu Asma’ al-Cubi called for Mujahedeen to carry weapons, “enter public places where there are Christians, and kill.” The Irgun, on the other hand, never called for the mass killing of British civilians. As presented in Begin’s Revolt, a totally successful operation against the King David would have resulted in no loss of life, the destruction of the building’s southern wing, and with it, the valuable documents seized in the raids against the Jewish Agency. Compare this to 9/11, when, according the 9/11 Commission Report, the hijackers specifically targeted transcontinental flights because they had more jet fuel and would therefore create a larger explosion—and, consequently, more death and destruction—upon impact.
Do those who we call terrorists today delay their attacks, or inform the enemy of them in advance, in order to save their lives? In his memoir, Begin explains that the plan was to launch the attack at 11 a.m. when the café underneath the Secretariat and military headquarters would be most empty, but last-minute tactical issues delayed the operation for an hour. Begin also describes the debate regarding how much time should pass between when the explosives are planted and when they are detonated:
Giddy suggested forty-five minutes. Sadeh thought this was “too long, as the British might then manage not only to evacuate their people but to get the documents out as well.” He consequently proposed that we allow only fifteen minutes for the evacuation of the hotel. Giddy reassured him. Despite his youth Giddy had had far more practical experience in this kind of fighting than had the Haganah Operations officer. He replied that experience had taught him that when the authorities received warning that one of their offices was about to be blown up, they left the building at high speed, and did not waste time on documents. Giddy felt that fifteen minutes might not give a safe margin for evacuating the building. Finally, agreement was reached by a compromise: half an hour.
Within minutes of the operatives’ planting the bombs, an Irgun telephonist called the hotel switchboard, the Palestine Post, and the French Consulate to warn of the impending explosion. The consulate, located across the street from the King David, heeded the recommendation to open its windows to keep the blast from spraying glass into its offices, and as a result, neither the consulate building nor the people in it were harmed. Only the British refused to oblige and evacuate the hotel. Upon learning of the threat from the hotel management, an indignant British official reportedly said, “We are not here to take orders from the Jews. We give them orders.”
After the dust settled, it was reported that 91 people had been killed in the attack. Afterwards, Begin wrote in The Revolt:
After the dust settled, it was reported that 91 people had been killed in the attack. Afterwards, Begin wrote in The Revolt:
We particularly mourned the alien civilians whom we had had no wish to hurt, and the fifteen Jewish civilians, among them good friends, who had so tragically fallen. Our satisfaction at the success of the great operation was bitterly marred. Again we went through days of pain and nights of sorrow for the blood that need not have been shed.
Rarely, if ever, do we hear such remorseful sentiments from modern individuals generally called terrorists. Begin lamented the loss of innocent life and did not seek to justify their deaths. Collateral damage is among the most unfortunate aspects of war, and Begin believed that the Irgun under his command had done all it could to prevent civilian deaths.
Beyond the specific purpose of the King David attack—destroying the documents seized in the raid on the Jewish Agency—the Irgun’s objective was to force the British from Palestine not by overwhelming them militarily, but by demonstrating that the lives, resources, and prestige lost were not worth the benefit of occupation. Such tactics greatly resemble those used by combatants against American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the essential difference between those insurgents and the Irgun is that the latter helped defeat the British without having to target innocent civilians. Middle Eastern insurgents and other terrorist groups (and the Stern Gang, for that matter, a smaller underground Jewish group in Mandatory Palestine), by contrast, have inflicted harm both by attacking legitimate targets and by hitting civilians.
Like 9/11 and many other attacks of this generation, the bombing of the King David building, and the revolt conducted between 1944 and 1947, were, without a doubt, acts of political violence. But Begin’s attack occurred within the context of a specific legal framework: like George Washington in the colonies, Begin and the leadership of the Jews in Palestine claimed the British were ruling incongruously with their own law and forfeiting their legitimacy to govern. By limiting immigration to 75,000 Jews over the course of five years and by ceasing Jewish immigration after 1944 “unless the Arabs of Palestine are prepared to acquiesce to it,” the British violated the legal obligations they had imposed on themselves in the League of Nations-approved Mandate. Those quotas meant that the gates to Palestine were closed to 99.92 percent of Europe’s Jewish population, and especially concerned the Jews in Palestine as Hitler grew stronger fewer than four months before the start of WWII. Speaking out against White Paper, Winston Churchill said, “Now, there is the breach; there is the violation of the pledge; there is the abandonment of the Balfour Declaration.” Churchill’s opposition was endorsed by 178 other members of the House of Commons who voted in line with him during the May 1939 debate over the White Paper (a majority of 268 voted in favor of the White Paper, and it was passed).
The general understanding of the word “terrorism” has evolved significantly since the 1940s. Most terrorist groups of the last few decades have been far less constrained than were Menachem Begin and his Irgun colleagues in the days of the Palestine Mandate. Today’s major terrorist groups do not limit their attacks to enemy soldiers. They do not try to limit civilian casualties. Their goals are often not confined to national liberation and the end of an alien occupation. Because the term “terrorism” is now generally associated with the kind of violence that targets civilians, it is misleading to continue to use it for the kind of carefully circumscribed political violence used by Begin in the King David bombing.
// DORE FEITH is a First-year in Columbia College and the Web Editor for The Current. He can be reached at dlf2133@columbia.edu. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.