Jews celebrate
60th anniversary of terrorist bombing The rightwingers, including Binyamin Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister, are commemorating the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of British rule, that killed 92 people and helped to drive the British from Palestine. They have erected a plaque outside the restored building, and are holding a two-day seminar with speeches and a tour of the hotel by one of the Jewish terrorists involved in the attack. Simon McDonald, the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv, and John Jenkins, the Consul-General in Jerusalem, have written to the municipality, stating: “We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated.”  In particular they demanded the removal of the plaque
that pays tribute to the Irgun, the Jewish resistance branch headed by Menachem
Begin, the future Prime Minister, which carried out the attack
on July 22, 1946.The plaque presents as fact the Irgun’s claim that people died because the British ignored warning calls. “For reasons known only to the British, the hotel was not evacuated,” it states.  Mr. McDonald and Dr. Jenkins denied that the British had been warned, adding that even if they had “this does not absolve those who planted the bomb from responsibility for the deaths”. On Monday city officials agreed to remove the language deemed offensive from the blue sign hanging on the hotel’s gates, though that had not been done shortly before it was unveiled last night. The controversy over the plaque and the two-day celebration of the bombing, sponsored by Irgun veterans and the right-wing Menachem Begin Heritage Center, goes to the heart of the debate over the use of political violence in the Middle East. Yesterday Mr. Netanyahu argued in a speech celebrating the attack that the Irgun were governed by morals, unlike fighters from groups such as Hamas. “It’s very important to make the distinction between terror groups and freedom fighters, and between terror action and legitimate military action,” he said. “Imagine that Hamas or Hezbollah would call the military headquarters in Tel Aviv and say, ‘We have placed a bomb and we are asking you to evacuate the area’.” But the view of the attack was very different in 1946 when The Times branded the Irgun “terrorists in disguise”. Decades later, Irgun veterans are unrepentant. Sarah Agassi, 80, remembers spying in the King David Hotel. She and a fellow agent posed as a couple. They danced
tangos and waltzes, sipped whisky and wine while they cased out the
hotel.
On the
day her brother and his fellow fighters posed as Arabs
delivering milk and brought seven milk churns, each containing 50kg of
explosives, into the building. Ms. Agassi waited across the street
until her brother rushed out. She said that she then made the
warning call to the British command in the hotel.
Sitting
in the luxurious hotel lobby, she expressed no regret. “We
fought for our independence. We thought it was the right way ... If I
had to fight
for Israel, I swear even now I would do anything.”
"For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb goyim. It doesn't even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central headquarters for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a
university for budding crooks." |
© 2006 British People's Party, BM Box 5581, London WC1N 3XX