1946
Zionists bomb the King David Hotel
In 1920 the British government undertook the rule of some parts of the former Turkish Empire. In the form of a mandate from the League of Nations, Britain occupied Palestine and Transjordan with their mixture of Arabs and Jews, Christians and Muslims. It was an unhappy regime with all sides calling for the withdrawal of the foreigners and independence for the various religious groups; Jews fought Arabs, Arabs fought Jews, and both sides took shots at the British.
After the end of World War II, Arabs and Jews continued their attacks on each other and on the British occupying force, who had no intention of staying but who had to maintain order until an international settlement was agreed upon to divide the land between Jews and Palestinians. An obvious target was the King David Hotel, headquarters of the Secretariat of the Government of Palestine and of the British Armed Forces in the region. A hard-line group of Jewish terrorists, the Irgun, received permission from the umbrella group guiding the Zionist military movement to attack the hotel and planned to plant hundreds of pounds of explosives in milk cans in the basement. This they did at noon on July 22; phone calls warning of the bombs may — or may not — have been made, but no evacuation had taken place before the devices exploded, bringing down a wing of the hotel.
The explosions killed 91 people, a mixture of British officials and clerks, Jews (including some supporters of Irgun), foreign visitors and Arabs. An outraged Britain clamped down on Jewish life in Jerusalem, achieving Irgun’s aim of causing further discontent with the Mandate occupation. To this day, the Israeli government treats the bombers as heroes.