King David Hotel Bombing

On July 22, 1946, the primary Jewish underground militant group, Irgun Zvai Leumi, blew up the southern wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, in what was then British-ruled Palestine.

Zionists clashed many times with the British during the mid-twentieth century. The Balfour Declaration of 1916 promised the Jewish people a national home in Palestine. However, the 1936 Arab Revolt led Britain to retreat from this commitment, and in 1939 the British enacted the so-called White Paper, which limited Jewish immigrants to 75,000 over the next five years. During World War II the Irgun suspended attacks against the British in Palestine, concentrating instead on fighting the Germans, and many Irgun supporters joined the British Army. However, a more extreme splinter group called Lehi, or the Stern Gang, continued attacking the British in Palestine.

Most of the British Administration in Palestine was based in the King David, a seven-story luxury hotel. The Irgun strike force set out disguised as hotel workers on the morning of July 22, riding in a van loaded with seven milk churns filled with explosives and detonators. They entered the hotel, brought the churns in through the hotel's side gate, and placed them next to supporting pillars in the hotel restaurant. The timers on the bombs were set for 30 minutes.

The Irgun leader, Menachem Begin, who became Israel's prime minister in 1977, has publicly stated that the Irgun placed three phone calls to various parties before the blast, issuing a warning to minimize casualties. However, the British have long denied that they were warned before the explosion. If the calls were made, they were ignored, for the staff of the government secretariat and military command remained in their rooms. Ninety-one people were killed in the blast: 41 Arabs, 28 Britons, 17 Jews, and 5 others. In the face of this and other attacks, Britain soon turned over the administration of Palestine. The last British High Commissioner, General Sir Alan Cunningham, sailed from Haifa in May 1948. In 1995, in a controversial move, the Jerusalem Municipality chose to name a street “Gal Boulevard,” after Joshua “Gal” Goldschmidt, one of the planners of the King David Hotel attack.