Unprofessorial Behavior

Mark Danner, professor of journalism and politics at the University of California at Berkeley and Bard College and the author, most recently, of "Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror" published a long article on terrorism in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine.

He couldn't avoid mentioning the Irgun and Menachem Begin and this is what he wrote:-

The jihadis used terrorism to create a spectacle that would remove this certainty. They were by no means the first guerrilla group to adopt such a strategy. "History and our observation persuaded us," recalled Menachem Begin, the future Israeli prime minister who used terror with great success to drive the British out of Palestine during the mid-1940's, "that if we could succeed in destroying the government's prestige in Eretz Israel, the removal of its rule would follow automatically. Thenceforward, we gave no peace to this weak spot. Throughout all the years of our uprising, we hit at the British government's prestige, deliberately, tirelessly, unceasingly." In its most spectacular act, in July 1946, the Irgun guerrilla forces led by Begin bombed the King David Hotel, killing 91 people, most of them civilians.

So, Danner presumed to parallel jihadi terrorism to the urban guerrilla campaign waged by the Irgun led by Menachem Begin against the British rule in mandate Palestine by singling out the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel, emphasizing that 91 people were killed, "most of them civilians".

There is no comparison, neither in strategy, in tactics nor rationale.

The operation was initiated and approved by the heads of the Hagana within the framework of the United Resistance Movement, the British having decided to continue a policy of prohibition of immigration and prevention of the establishment of the Jewish National Home. The hotel was chosen as a target because its south wing had been sealed off since 1939 for the exclusive use of the secretariat of the mandatory government and the military headquarters of the British armed forces in the country. The civilians who died in the explosion were mainly the employees of the mandatory administration.

More important, however, is the fact that the Irgun never intended that anyone should die unlike today's jihadis who engage in terrorism that specifically seeks to kill primarily civilians. Telephone calls were made to the British in the hotel, as well as other actions, to warn them to evacuate and the unit commander delayed the explosion by a half hour to facilitate this.

In addition, the jihadis are out to destroy a "civilization", a "culture". Begin and the Irgun had nothing against the British as such, only their White Paper diplomacy.

And Danner didn't know all this or didn't care to know or...?