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发信人: wolf3 (黑暗世界的黎赛留), 信区: History
标  题: The Bombing Of The King David Hotel
发信站: BBS 水木清华站 (Mon Oct 27 00:00:12 2003), 转信

The King David Hotel in Jerusalem was built by the Moseri family,
members of the wealthy and influential Jewish establishment in Cairo and
Alexandria. They set up a shareholding company to finance its
construction, consisting mainly of Egyptian businessmen and wealthy Jews
from all over the world. The luxurious seven-storey building, with
200 rooms, was opened to the public in 1931. In 1938, the Mandatory
government requisitioned the entire southern wing of the hotel, and
housed the military command and the Mandatory government secretariat
there. The British chose the King David for its central location and
because it was easy to guard. They built a military communications
center in the hotel basement and, for security reasons, added a side
entrance linking the building to an army camp south of the hotel.
Fewer than a third of the rooms were reserved for civilian use.


It will be recalled that after Black Sabbath (Saturday), Menahem Begin
received a letter from Moshe Sneh (chief of the Haganah General
Headquarters) with instructions to blow up the King David. After
preparatory work and several postponements, Irgun fighters gathered at 7
am. on Monday, July 22, 1946 at the Bet Aharon Talmud Torah seminary in
Jerusalem. They arrived one by one, gave the password and assembled
in one of the classrooms. They realized that they were being sent on a
mission, but none of them knew what the target was. Shortly afterwards,
the senior command arrived and it was only when the briefing began that
the assembled fighters discovered that they were going to strike at the
King David Hotel.

After the weapons had been distributed, the first unit - the group of
"porters" - commanded by Yosef Avni, set out. Their assignment was to
reach the hotel by bus and to wait at the side entrance so as to
assist in unloading the explosives from the van when it arrived. All six
"porters" were disguised as Arabs so as to avoid arousing suspicion.
The strike force left next in a van loaded with seven milk-churns,
each containing 50 kilograms of explosives and special detonators. The
commander of the operation, Yisrael Levi (Gidon), rode in the van
dressed as a Sudanese waiter, while his deputy, Heinrich Reinhold
(Yanai), and the other members of the unit, were dressed as Arabs. The
van drove through the streets of Jerusalem, its tarpaulin cover
concealing the milk-churns and the passengers, and halted at the side
entrance of the hotel, through which foodstuffs were brought into the
basement 'La Regence' restaurant. The fighters easily overcame the
guards by the gate and hastened to the basement, where they searched all
the rooms, and assembled the workers in the restaurant kitchen. They
then returned to the van, brought the milk-churns into the restaurant,
and placed them beside the supporting pillars . Gidon set the time fuses
for 30 minutes, and ordered his men to leave. The staff gathered in the
kitchen were told to leave the building 10 minutes later to avoid
injury.

During the withdrawal from the basement, heavy gunfire was levelled at
the group and two fighters were injured. One of them, Aharon
Abramovitch, later died of his wounds.

After exiting the hotel, Gidon summoned two women fighters who were
waiting nearby, and ordered them to carry out their mission. They ran
over to a nearby telephone booth, and delivered the following message to
the hotel telephone operator and to the editorial office of the
Palestine Post:


I am speaking on behalf of the Hebrew underground.
We have placed an explosive device in the hotel.
Evacuate it at once - you have been warned.  


They also delivered a telephone warning to the French Consulate,
adjacent to the hotel, to open their windows to prevent blast damage.
The telephone messages were intended to prevent casualties.

Some 25 minutes after the telephone calls, a shattering explosion
shook Jerusalem, and reverberated at a great distance. The entire
southern wing of the King David Hotel - all seven storeys - was
totally destroyed. For reasons unclear, the staff of the government
secretariat and the military command remained in their rooms. Some of
them were unaware of events, and others were not permitted to leave
the building, thus accounting for the large number of victims trapped in
the debris.



King David Hotel after the explosion
For ten days, the British Engineering Corps cleared the wreckage, and on
July 31 it was officially announced that 91 people had been killed in
the explosion: 28 Britons, 41 Arabs, 17 Jews and 5 others.

The success of the Jewish underground in striking at the heart of
British government in Palestine, and the high toll of victims, sent
shock waves through England and the rest of the world. At first, the
Mandatory government denied having received a telephone warning, but
testimony submitted to the interrogating judge made it clear beyond a
doubt that such a warning had in fact been given. Moreover, the
Palestine Post telephone operator attested on oath to the police that,
immediately after receiving the telephone message, she had telephoned
the duty officer at the police station. The French Consulate staff
opened their windows as they had been told to by the anonymous woman who
telephoned them, and this was further evidence of the warning.



King David Hotel after the explosion
It is almost impossible to recapitulate what occurred in the
government secretariat offices in the half hour preceding the explosion,
but all the evidence suggests that there were numerous flaws in the
security arrangements in the King David, and that a series of
omissions occurred. The telephone warning was disregarded, and
although the warning signal was given, an all-clear was sounded
shortly before the explosion. These facts indicate that there were
serious errors in the decision-making process and that internal
communication did not function properly.

The heads of the Jewish Agency were stunned. They feared that the
British would adopt even more severe retaliatory measures than on
Black Sabbath, and hastened to denounce the operation in the strongest
terms. The statement they issued the following day expressed "their
feelings of horror at the base and unparalleled act perpetrated today by
a gang of criminals." Even David Ben-Gurion, who was then in Paris,
joined the chorus of condemnation, and in an interview to the French
newspaper 'France Soir', declared that the Irgun was "the enemy of the
Jewish people".

The denunciation by the Jewish Agency totally ignored the fact that
the bombing of the King David was carried out as part of the
activities of the United Resistance, and on the explicit instructions of
Moshe Sneh. At the request of the Haganah, the Irgun issued a leaflet
accepting responsibility for the operation. It stated, among other
things:



[...]
e. The telephone warnings were given at 12:10-12:15. And if it is true,
as the British liars have announced, that the explosion occurred at
12:37, they still had 22 minutes at their disposal in order to
evacuate the building of its residents and workers.
Therefore responsibility for loss of life among civilians rests solely
with them.
f. It is not true that the persons who delivered the warning spoke 'on
behalf of the United Resistance' (as the press reported)... On this
matter, we are refraining at present from making any further statement,
but it is possible that - in the context of the savage and dastardly
incitement - it will be necessary to issue such a statement at the
appropriate time.

g. We mourn the Jewish victims; they too are the tragic victims of the
tragic and noble Hebrew war of liberation
[...]


A year later the Irgun issued the following statement:



THE TRUTH ABOUT THE KING DAVID HOTEL

[...] On July 1 - two days after the British raid on the National
Institutions and on our towns and villages -we received a letter from
the headquarters of the United Resistance, demanding that we carry out
an attack on the center of government at the King David Hotel as soon as
possible...
Execution of this plan was postponed several times - both for
technical reasons and at the request of the United Resistance. It was
finally approved on July 22...

Notwithstanding this, days later, Kol Yisrael broadcast a statement - in
the name of the United Resistance - abhorring the high death toll at
the King David caused by the actions of the 'dissidents'...

We have kept silent for a whole year. We have faced savage incitement,
such as this country has never before known. We have withstood the worst
possible provocations - and remained silent. We have witnessed evasion,
hypocrisy and cowardice - and remained silent.

But today, when the United Resistance has expired and there is no hope
that it will ever be revived... there are no longer valid reasons why we
should maintain our silence concerning the assault against the center
of Nazi-British rule - one of the mightiest attacks ever carried out
by a militant underground. Now it is permissible to reveal the truth;
now we must reveal the truth. Let the people see - and judge.


July 22, 1947.  


The Hebrew press, and the Haganah publications, continued to condemn the
Irgun in the strongest possible terms. They were echoed by the
British press, which was briefed by the Mandatory government. However,
the effect of the British denunciations was blunted to a large extent by
the publication of instructions issued by General Sir Evelyn Barker
(British army commander in Palestine) several hours after the explosion.
He ordered all the Jewish places of entertainment, restaurants, shops
and Jewish homes - "out of bounds for all British officers and
soldiers". The instructions ended by saying that:


"The aim of these orders are to punish the Jews in a way the race
dislikes as much as any, namely by striking at their pockets"  

Barker's letter reached the Irgun's intelligence service and was
immediately made public in Palestine and throughout the world. The
antisemitic tone of the letter greatly embarrassed the British
government and diverted public opinion from the attack on the King David
Hotel. Questions were asked in the House of Commons about the letter
and the London Daily Herald wrote, among other things, that if General
Barker had in fact written the letter, he was demonstrating his
unsuitability for his position.

The order was officially rescinded two weeks after it was issued, but
the damage to the British cause in Palestine could not be erased.

However, as a result of Black Sabbath, the moderates now held the
upper hand, and at a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive in Paris
on August 5, 1946, it was decided to terminate the armed struggle
against the British in Palestine. This marked the end of the glorious
ten-month period when all the Jewish forces in Eretz Israel (Haganah,
Irgun and Lehi) fought together against foreign rule.

The terminating of the armed struggle provoked considerable resentment
among many members of the Haganah, and Yitzhak Sadeh (commander of the
Palmach) gave vent to this emotion in his article "Proposal and
Response" in Ahdut Ha'avoda, October 15, 1946 which he signed Noded
(Wanderer).

There will be no capitulation, because there is nobody to order
capitulation, and should such a person be found, he would find nobody to
carry out the order.  


The Haganah focused its efforts on bringing in illegal immigrants, and
in order to appease those activists in the Haganah ranks who continued
to favor armed struggle, it sanctioned the sabotaging of British naval
vessels which were hunting down illegal immigrants. Thus, on August 18,
1946, Palmach fighters sabotaged the Empire Haywood and two days
later damaged the Empire Rival, the two ships used for deporting
immigrants from Haifa to Cyprus.

When the United Resistance ceased to exist, the Irgun and Lehi continued
the armed struggle alone. The Irgun was now both morally and materially
stronger than ever before. Support for its cause had grown, since the
United Resistance had legitimized its activities. The number of recruits
increased, and its stock of weapons and ammunition was expanded as a
result of its acquisitions from British army depots. Free of the
restrictions imposed by the Haganah command, the Irgun now intensified
its anti-British activities.
--
FROM 61.149.31.118