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The Gazette and the 1952 revolution (257) The revolution and pacts (88) In the House of Commons (iv) The King David Hotel Massacre II- Explosives in the basement
On Monday, July 22, 1946, 225 kg of explosives were set off in the basement of the King David Hotel. The blast and collapse of an entire wing (seven stories) of the hotel killed 92 people Britons, Arabs and Jews). The bombers were members of the militant Zionist ‘underground' organisation, Irgun, a group headed by Menahem Begin (1913-1992) who would later serve as Israel's sixth prime minister, starting in 1977. Fifty-eight were wounded. An earlier attempt by the Irgun to attack the hotel was foiled when the Haganah learned of it through Teddy Kollek of the Jewish Agency and warned the British authorities. Amichai Paglin, Chief of Operations of the Irgun, had developed a remote-controlled mortar with a range of four miles which was nicknamed the V3 by British military engineers. In 1945, after attacks using some had been made on several police stations, six V3s were buried in the olive grove park south of the King David Hotel. Three were aimed at the government printing press and three at the hotel itself. The British Army sappers then dug them up. On another occasion, members of an unknown group threw grenades, which missed, at the hotel. The King David Hotel explosion was not just an act of “Jewish extremists", but a premeditated massacre conducted by the Irgun in agreement with the highest Jewish political authorities in Palestine — the Jewish Agency and its head David-Ben-Gurion. According to Yitshaq Ben-Ami, a Palestinian Jew who spent 30 years in exile after the establishment of Israel investigating the crimes of the “ruthless clique heading the internal Zionist movement," the Irgun had conceived a plan for the King David attack early in 1946, but the green light was given only on July 1. According to Dr Sneh, the operation was personally approved by Ben-Gurion, from his self-exile in Europe. The Jewish Agency's motive was to destroy all evidence the British had gathered proving that the terrorist crime waves in Palestine were not merely the actions of ‘fringe' groups such as the Irgun and Stern Gang, but were committed in collusion with the Haganah and Palmach groups and under the direction of the highest political body of the Zionist establishment itself, namely the Jewish Agency. That so many innocent civilian lives were lost in the King David massacre is a normal part of the pattern of the history of Zionist outrages: A criminal act is committed, allegedly by an isolated group, but actually under the direct authorisation of the highest Zionist authorities, whether of the Jewish Agency during the Palestine Mandate or of the Government of Israel thereafter. The Jewish Agency's motive was to destroy all evidence the British had gathered proving that the terrorist crime waves in Palestine were not merely the actions of “fringe" groups such as the Irgun and Stern Gang, but were committed in collusion with the Haganah and Palmach groups and under the direction of the highest political body of the Zionist establishment itself, namely the Jewish Agency. [email protected]
