So it’s OK to shoot a few British soldiers to further your “noble” cause ?. And its also Ok to plant a very destructive bomb as long as you tell people beforhand ? This is very twisted logic.
Rayne Man,
Granted the bombing of the King David Hotel was wrong. However, please go back and re-read C K Dexter Haven’s second (and more important point) that the bombings were condemned by mainstream Israelis. Were that it were so with the Palestinians with regard to thier bombers.
Zev Steinhardt
So it’s OK to shoot a few British soldiers to further your “noble” cause ?. And its also Ok to plant a very destructive bomb as long as you tell people beforhand ? This is very twisted logic.
Source: http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/myths/mf2.html#h
The King David Hotel was the site of the British military command and the British Criminal Investigation Division. The Irgun chose it as a target after British troops invaded the Jewish Agency June 29, 1946, and confiscated large quantities of documents. At about the same time, more than 2,500 Jews from all over Palestine were placed under arrest. The information about Jewish Agency operations, including intelligence activities in Arab countries, was taken to the King David Hotel.
A week later, news of a massacre of 40 Jews in a pogrom in Poland reminded the Jews of Palestine how Britain’s restrictive immigration policy had condemned thousands to death.
Irgun leader Menachem Begin stressed his desire to avoid civilian casualties and said three telephone calls were placed, one to the hotel, another to the French Consulate, and a third to the Palestine Post, warning that explosives in the King David Hotel would soon be detonated.
On July 22, 1946, the calls were made. The call into the hotel was apparently received and ignored. Begin quotes one British official who supposedly refused to evacuate the building, saying: "We don’t take orders from the Jews."42 As a result, when the bombs exploded, the casualty toll was high: a total of 91 killed and 45 injured. Among the casualties were 15 Jews. Few people in the hotel proper were injured by the blast.43
In contrast to Arab attacks against Jews, which were widely hailed as heroic actions, the Jewish National Council denounced the bombing of the King David.44
For decades the British denied they had been warned. In 1979, however, a member of the British Parliament introduced evidence that the Irgun had indeed issued the warning. He offered the testimony of a British officer who heard other officers in the King David Hotel bar joking about a Zionist threat to the headquarters. The officer who overheard the conversation immediately left the hotel and survived.45
Killing enemy soldiers in a war? No, we don’t have a problem with that.
There was no war. The British troops were there to police the UN mandate, They were not " the enemy". Now you can see why some British people are not pro Isreal.
Does this mean you’re fine with this, then?
BTW I am British, and I am not, nor have I have ever met anyone who has been, anti-Israeli due to Britain’s former involvement in the Middle East.
Poppycock. Can you explain to me what the Brits were doing there in the first place? Palestine was 4,000 miles away from home, had no military or economic value and did not have an inherently hostile population. The only reason they held the country was because they conquered it from the Turks and then could’t figure out what to do with it. Remember, 8 years after they left, British troops were fighting shoulder to shoulder with the IDF in the Suez.
And BTW, the mandate was awarded by the utterly useless League of Nations, not the U.N.
Of course not. I’m angry at the Situation, at fate, at the army for screwing up, and at myself for being 7,000 miles away. I’m angry at the palestinians for hiding behind human shields and for crying “massacre” after they put up a very good fight.
But I’m not angry at them for killing our troops. This isn’t a suicide bomber or a guy emptying an AK-47 into a little girl’s birthday party; it’s combat, warfare, both sides just doing their jobs.
So no, I’m no “fine with this”. however, my objections are not moral ones.
It should be also noted that in 1939, before WWII, the British executed the “White Paper.” The main provisions of the White Paper were: no partition, no Jewish State; an independent Palestine State within 10 years; and no Jewish immigration after 5 years. So you see why the Jews were not too happy with the Brits.
Let me add to my prior post. The White Paper was executed to appease the Arabs and eliminate Arab hostility to Britain during WWII.
The main response of he Yishuv leadership, under Ben-Gurion, in the months between the publication of the White Paper and the outbreak of war, was increased illegal immigration, for Jews to get out of Europe. At the outset of the War, Weizman said that although the Jews have grievances, above their regret and bitterness were higher interests. The British war was the Jewish war too. So the Jews fought the War as if the White Paper did not exist. Fighting the war remained for the Yishuv a matter of far greater urgency and importance than fighting the White Paper. Twice as many Jews fought for Britain than Arabs although the Arabs were double the population. The Jews pressed for the formation of large Jewish units, but the British were suspicious of the Hagana (comrades not in uniform) and also, to a lesser extent, the armed Jews, even in British uniform.
During 1939-1940 the whole Yishuv was wholeheartedly in support of the British. The Irgun not only dropped its prewar terrorist tendency, but worked closely with the British.
Churchill wa a friend of the Jews and to Zionism. The Yishov hoped that the White Paper would be discarded once he replaced Chamberlain, but it was not.
Of course, events like the * Struma [/], a cattle boat carrying 769 Jewish refugees from the Black Sea towards Palestine, which was turned back by the Turks, and which sank with only two survivors, turned many Jews against Churchill’s Britain.
From * The Siege * by Conor Cruise O’Brien (1986).