The King David Hotel bombing was an attack carried out by the militant Zionist group Irgun, on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. The hotel was the site of the central offices of the British Mandatory authorities of Palestine, the Secretariat of the Government of Palestine and Headquarters of the British Forces in Palestine and Transjordan. The attack, carried out on 22 July 1946, was the deadliest directed against the British during the Mandate era (1920-1948).
Disguised as Arabs, Irgunists planted a bomb in the basement of the main building of the hotel, under the wing which housed the Mandate Secretariat and part of the British military headquarters. Telephoned warnings were sent to the switchboard by the hotel's main lobby, the Palestine Post newspaper, and the French consulate. The Secretariat or military headquarters, which had separate switchboards, were not notified. No evacuation was carried out. The ensuing explosion caused the collapse of the western half of the southern wing of the hotel. 91 people were killed and 46 were injured, with some of the deaths and injuries occurring in the road outside the hotel and in adjacent buildings. Controversy has arisen over the timing and adequacy of these warnings and the reasons why the hotel was not evacuated.
Background
See also: List of Irgun attacksEarlier attacks
Amichai Paglin, Chief of Operations of the Irgun, developed a remote-controlled mortar with a range of four miles, which was nicknamed the V3 by British military engineers. After they had been used to bombard some police stations, six V3s were buried in the olive grove park south of the King David Hotel in 1945. Militants aimed three of them at the government printing press and three at the hotel itself.
The militants intended to fire them on the King's birthday, but the Haganah learned about the plan and warned the British through Teddy Kollek of the Jewish Agency. Army sappers then dug them up. On another occasion during a smaller-scale attack, members of an unknown group threw grenades at the hotel, but they missed.
Motivation for the bombing
Irgun committed the attack in response to Operation Agatha, known within Israel then and now as "Black Saturday". British troops had searched the Jewish Agency on June 29 and confiscated large quantities of documents about the group's operations and links with violent groups. The intelligence information was taken to the King David Hotel building in Jerusalem.
The building contained the British military command and their Criminal Investigation Division. Security analyst Bruce Hoffman has written that the "Hotel housed the nerve centre of British rule in Palestine". Specifically, the Irgun aimed at destroying the southern wing of the hotel, which housed the Mandate's intelligence records about Irgun, the Hagana, Lehi, and other Jewish paramilitary groups.
Layout of the hotel
In plan form, the six-story hotel, which was opened in 1932 as the first, modern, luxury one in Jerusalem, was a flattened and elongated H, with a long central axis connecting wings to the north and south. Julian's Way, a main road, ran parallel and close to the west side of the hotel. An unsurfaced lane, where the French Consulate was situated and from where access to the service entrance of the hotel was gained, ran from there past the north end of the hotel. Gardens and an olive grove, which had been designated as a park, surrounded the other sides. About.com has called the complex "a Jerusalem landmark and Israel's most famous hotel."
In 1946, the Secretariat occupied most of the southern wing of the hotel, with the military headquarters occupying the top floor of the south wing and the top, second and third floors of the middle of the hotel. The military telephone exchange was situated in the basement. An annexe housed the military police and a branch of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Palestine Police.
Rooms were first requisitioned in the hotel in late 1938, on what was supposed to be a temporary basis. Plans had already been made to erect a permanent building for the Secretariat and Army GHQ, but these were cancelled after the Second World War broke out. At the outbreak of the war, more than two-thirds of the hotel's rooms were being used for government and army purposes. In March 6, 1946, Labour Party MP Richard Crossman described the hotel as "private dectectives, Zionist agents, Arab sheiks, special correspondents, and the rest, all sitting around about discreetly overhearing each other."
Preparations for the attack
Planning
The leaders of Haganah opposed the idea initially. On July 1, 1946, Moshe Sneh, chief of the Haganah General Headquarters, sent a letter to the then leader of the Irgun, Menachem Begin, which instructed him to "carry out the operation at the "chick", code for the King David Hotel." Despite this approval for the project, repeated delays in executing the operation were requested by the Haganah, in response to changes unfolding in the political situation. The plan was finalized between Amichai Paglin (Irgun alias 'Gidi'), Chief of Operations of the Irgun, and Itzhak Sadeh, commander of the Palmach.
In the plan, Irgun men, disguised as Arabs, except for Gideon, the leader, who would be dressed as one of the hotel's distinctive Sudanese waiters, would enter the building through a basement service entrance carrying the explosives concealed in milk cans. The cans were to be placed by the main columns supporting the wing where the majority of the offices used by the British authorities were located. The columns were in a basement nightclub known as the Regencé. In the final review of the plan, it was decided that the attack would take place on July 22 at 11:00, a time when there would be no people in the coffee shop in the basement in the area where the bomb was to be planted. It would be possible to enter the hotel more easily at that time as well.
It would have been impossible to have planted the bomb in the Regence any later than 14:00 because it was always full of customers after that time. The timing was also determined by the original intention that the attack should coincide with another, carried out by the Lehi, on government offices at the David Brothers Building. However, that attack, codenamed "Operation Your Slave and Redeemer", was canceled at the last moment. The Irgun said details of the plan were aimed at minimizing civilian casualties. Irgun reports allegedly included explicit precautions so that the whole area would be evacuated. This led to recriminations between the Haganah and Irgun later. The Haganah said that they had specified that the attack should take place later in the day, when the offices would have been emptier of people.
Warnings
Since the bombing, much controversy has ensued over the issues of when warnings were sent and how the British authorities responded. Irgun representatives have always stated that the warning was given well in advance of the explosion, so that adequate time was available to evacuate the hotel. Menachem Begin, for example, writes that the telephone message was delivered 25–27 minutes before the explosion. It is often stated that the British authorities have always denied that a warning was sent. However, what the British Government said, five months after the bombing, once the subsequent inquest and all the inquiries had been completed, was not that no warning had been sent, but that no such warning had been received by anyone at the Secretariat "in an official position with any power to take action."
American author Thurston Clarke's analysis of the bombing gave timings for calls and for the explosion which he says took place at 12:37. He said that as part of the Irgun plan, a sixteen year old recruit, Adina Hay (alias Tehia), was to make three warning calls before the attack. At 12:22 the first call was made, in both Hebrew and English, to a telephone operator on the hotel's switchboard (the Secretariat and the military each had their own, separate, telephone exchanges). It was ignored. At 12:27, the second warning call was made to the French Consulate adjacent to the hotel to the north-east. This second call was taken seriously and staff went through the building opening windows and closing curtains to lessen the impact of the blast. At 12:31 a third and final warning call to the Palestine Post newspaper was made. The telephone operator called the Palestine Police CID to report the message. She then called the hotel switchboard. The hotel operator reported the threat to one of the hotel managers. This warning resulted in the discovery of the milk churns in the basement, but by then it was too late.
Some Israeli observers have stated that the British had received enough warning but they assumed that the Hotel was so heavily guarded that any attack would be futile. Begin claimed in his memoirs that the British had deliberately kept civilians in so that they could vilify the Jewish militant groups, although no evidence has ever been produced to support this.
Leaks and rumours
Shortly after noon, Palestine time, the London bureau of UP
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