King David Hotel Bombing 1946: Attack in Mandate Jerusalem

The King David Hotel bombing was an attack on 22 July 1946 in which the Jewish underground organisation Irgun blew up the southern wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the seat of Britain’s administration in Mandatory Palestine. Ninety-one people were killed, making it the deadliest attack of the Jewish armed campaign against British rule.

The bombing was a turning point in the struggle between Britain and the Jewish armed groups in Palestine. It shocked opinion in Britain and abroad and contributed to the British decision to hand the future of Palestine to the United Nations.

Background

Britain had ruled Palestine since the First World War, under a League of Nations mandate that incorporated the promise of a Jewish national home made in the Balfour Declaration. After 1945 the main Jewish armed organisations, the Haganah, the Irgun and Lehi, formed a loose Jewish Resistance Movement to oppose British limits on Jewish immigration, at a time when hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors were in displaced persons camps in Europe.

On 29 June 1946 British forces launched Operation Agatha, known to Jews as “Black Saturday”. Troops raided the Jewish Agency and other institutions, arrested about 2,700 people and seized large quantities of documents. Many of these documents were believed to have been taken to the King David Hotel, whose southern wing housed the Secretariat of the Mandate government and the British military headquarters.

The attack

The attack was planned within the Jewish Resistance Movement, although the Haganah’s role and its request for a postponement remain debated. On the morning of 22 July, Irgun members disguised as Arab workers and hotel waiters brought milk churns packed with explosives, around 350 kilograms in total, into the basement beneath the Secretariat offices, through the hotel’s café area. A brief exchange of fire took place as they withdrew.

According to the Irgun, warning telephone calls were then made to the hotel switchboard, the neighbouring French consulate and the Palestine Post newspaper. At about 12:37 the explosives detonated, bringing down the western half of the southern wing from roof to basement. Rescue work went on for days, as soldiers, police and volunteers dug through the rubble for survivors and bodies. The rest of the hotel, including the wings used by guests, remained standing.

The dead included 41 Arabs, 28 Britons and 17 Jews, as well as several people of other nationalities. Most were civil servants, clerks, soldiers and hotel staff. The Chief Secretary of the Mandate government, Sir John Shaw, survived because his office was in a part of the building that did not collapse.

The warnings dispute

Whether a warning was given, and whether it could have saved lives, became one of the most contested questions about the attack. Irgun leader Menachem Begin insisted the warnings were made to allow evacuation and blamed the British for not acting. British officials denied that any warning reached anyone with authority to order an evacuation in time. Historians generally accept that some calls were made but disagree on their timing and on how they were handled.

Consequences

The Jewish Agency and the Haganah publicly condemned the bombing, and the Jewish Resistance Movement soon broke up. The British commander in Palestine, Lieutenant-General Sir Evelyn Barker, issued an order banning his troops from Jewish establishments, written in language widely condemned as antisemitic; it was later withdrawn. Large searches and a curfew in Tel Aviv followed. In an operation known as Shark, at the end of July 1946, troops and police searched the city house by house for several days and detained hundreds of suspects. The Irgun and Lehi continued their campaign against British targets over the following two years.

In Britain the attack strengthened the view that the Mandate had become too costly. In February 1947 the government announced that it would refer the Palestine question to the United Nations, leading to the UN Partition Plan for Palestine in November 1947 and the end of the Mandate in May 1948.

Key people

• Menachem Begin (1913–1992): commander of the Irgun from late 1943, who later founded the Herut party and served as prime minister of Israel from 1977 to 1983.
• Sir John Shaw (1894–1982): Chief Secretary of the Mandate government, whose Secretariat occupied the bombed wing; he survived the attack.
• Sir Evelyn Barker (1894–1983): General Officer Commanding British forces in Palestine and Transjordan, whose order after the bombing caused a scandal.
• Sir Alan Cunningham (1887–1983): the last British High Commissioner for Palestine, in office from 1945 to 1948.

Timeline

• 1946, 29 June: British forces launch Operation Agatha against Jewish institutions.
• 1946, 22 July: The Irgun bombs the southern wing of the King David Hotel; 91 people are killed.
• 1946, August: The Jewish Resistance Movement breaks up.
• 1947, February: Britain announces it will refer Palestine to the United Nations.
• 1947, 29 November: The UN General Assembly adopts the partition plan.
• 1948, 14 May: The British Mandate ends and Israel declares independence.

Why it matters

The King David Hotel bombing was the most lethal attack of the Jewish armed campaign against British rule in Palestine. It remains controversial: some see it as a legitimate strike against a military target in an anti-colonial struggle, others as an act of terrorism that killed many civilians. Either way, it hastened Britain’s withdrawal and the events that led to the Israeli Declaration of Independence.