Moshe Sneh's Role in the King David Explosion

Recently, a new biography on Moshe Sneh has appeared, authored by Nir Mann, dealing with the period of his life when he commanded the Hebrew Resistance Movement.

Based on a review by Yossi Kister that appeared in Ha'Umma, in its issue 234, I summarize some new material on the King David Hotel explosion, portions which appeared in various articles Mann published.

Sneh pushed a line that was termed "activist" in those days in the Yishuv which meant that the fighting forces would attack rather than respond. As a result, between the end of 1945 and the summer of 1946, relatively large-scale and well-coordinated insurgency operations took place against British installations, rail lines, bridges and othe targets.

Already in May 1946, Sneh managed to get its Committee 'X' to authorize a new series of objects, one of which included the King David Hotel's southern wing. It was that section of the hotel that had been appropriated by the Mandate Government already in 1939 for offices. In 1946, senior officials, both in the civil and military departments, were in that wing.

However, on May 8, 1946, David Ben-Gurion had written of his unwillingess to continue offense actions. Sneh's policy was saved, as it were, by Britain's unwillingness to permit increased immigration which undermined the position furthered by Moshe Sharett and other moderates. In reaction to the "Black Sabbath" operation of the British, a further decision was taken to act in a triple operation.

Some ten days prior to the King David operation, the personal political secretary of Chaim Weizmann, Meir Wesigal, visited Sneh and instructed him to cease all military operations. As a result, Sneh tendered his resignation on July 17. However, despite the initial authorization given to both the Irgun and the Lechi for the planned actions at the Hotel and the nearby Royal Air Force Intelligence offices, Sneh did not inform neither Menachem Begin or Natan Yellin-Mor regarding his resignation.

His handwritten note to Begin of July 19 simply asked Begin, a second time, to delay the operation for a few days. Begin waited a few days and the new date was fixed for July 22. However, Begin was not apprised of the resignation. Moreover, he was unaware that Sneh on the day of the explosion was in Haifa sneaking aboard a commercial ship and the next day left the country clandestinely for Paris, there to join Ben-Gurion for a Zionist conference.

In a sense, Begin, and the Irgun, were left "holding the bag". The Hagana-led United Resistance Movement had insisted that the Irgun assume all responsibility even though the regular policy was that only the URM would appear as the sponsoring organization in announcements.

If Sneh had informed Begin of all the background, had told him he was no long the head of the URM (to one interviewer in his later years he said he didn't tell Begin to further delay the operation as he was no longer in command (!)) or even ordered him to halt the plans, there may have been a difference although I am not sure. 

In any case, the King David Hotel explosion was a joint Hagana-Irgun operation authorized by the highest echelons.

^

Anti-Semitism in UK Parliamnet

No, not today.

July 31, 1946.

Here is MP Richard Crossman commenting in the debate following the King David explosion:

May I turn to General Barker?(*)                                                                              I am not so much concerned with him as with anti-Semitism. I was a little shocked at the roars of applause on the Benches opposite when the right hon. Member for West Bristol defended General Barker from the point of view that there was a great strain in Palestine, and that little errors of tact must be explained or excused. When one's troops are doing a military operation against the Jewish people, the danger of anti-Semitism is extraordinarily high. The natural instinct is to dislike the race or people one is1014fighting. There is an inclination rather to have it out with the Jewish community than to limit one's hatred to terrorism. This is a natural inclination, and it is all-important that the men at the top should give no sign of countenance, by word or praise, to support anti-Semitism. They should not officially give those under their command the feeling that it will not be ruthlessly penalised.

We are living in a strange world. I spent 120 days meeting and talking with Jews and others in Palestine, and elsewhere. I became aware of the deep unconscious anti-Semitism which there is in us, a virus, a poison which has been put into us by Hitler. I became more aware of it last Monday, when I listened to a moving Debate on Germany, in which I heard hon. Members advocating that Habeas Corpus must be given back to S.S. men; that it was impossible, as two hon. Members said, to indict a whole people. One even said that to indict an organisation was impossible. One Member said, "After all, liberty means liberty to be a Nazi." Those are sound sentiments. But I thought it a monstrous irony that a year after the war has finished hon. Members are making speeches forgiving the nation which killed six million Jews and pleading from all sides of the House that we should be fair to the Germans at a moment when they are condoning the removal of Habeas Corpus altogether in Palestine. There has not been a right to Habeas Corpus for any Jew or Arab in Palestine since the emergency regulations were introduced. They have been living under a more ruthless form of dictatorship in Palestine than the people living in the control division of Germany or Austria.

(*)

and here

'There Was A Warning" - King David Hotel UPDATED

'There was a warning' at King David Hotel, July 22, 1946

(h/t+CF)

ADDRESS [OF LORD JANNER] IN REPLY TO HER MAJESTY'S MOST GRACIOUS SPEECH

HL Deb 22 May 1979 vol 400 cc233-432233

Lord Carrington
My Lords, I think we ought to face up to the fact that no country in the world faces Israel's security problems or has so much at stake. Since independence in 1948 her population has increased fivefold. In an area of development, few countries can show Israel's record in agriculture, health conditions, education and industrial development. It is practically the only country in the world that has emerged to independence since the war that has faced these problems at once and has tackled them in a system of democracy.
There is one thing I should like to add. I think it should be said. There is an attempt made to defame the present Prime Minister of the State of Israel—who, incidentally, is here to talk to many 282important people in this country; and I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I leave the Chamber for a few hours later on in order to hear what he has to say. He is speaking in Central Hall, Westminster. As your Lordships know, I am against terrorism of any kind and for any purpose. But I think we must be fair. I was informed that on a radio interview Mr. Begin a few days ago explained the line that his friends took when he said that under no circumstances did they plan attacks on women, children or civilians.

I think the House is entitled to know some facts that I came across in the course of some professional inquiries I have been making in respect of what happened at the time of the King David Hotel incident. I came across them not very long ago; I am saying this with the consent both of the people who have been in touch with me and also of the doctor concerned. I want to wipe away the suggestion that no warning was given. I propose to read a letter from a Dr. Crawford in Bournemouth. I quote: It was very kind of you to phone me today and I sat down at once to write to you". I met Dr. Crawford at another venture of Israel which is well known to many people—the Magem David, which is the Shield of David Ambulance and Health Services. I happened to meet him at a conference held in Bournemouth. Casually he told me that he knew something about this. He says in his letter: "Further to our recent conversation in Bournemouth, I am writing to confirm that the officer"— he spoke about an officer whose name, I am sure, is known to those who were in Palestine— "who wrote to me in 1946 concerning the King David Hotel 'incident' was Major-General Dudley Sheridan Skelton, CB, DSO, FRCS, formerly DGMS in India, Hon Physician to HM The King and to HE the Viceroy of India. He retired from the forces about 1937"— I think that it is of great importance that this attack should be properly and effectively met— "when he was given the rank of Brigadier and was ADMS in the SE Command. It was in this area that I met him in the course of my duties as Assistant Medical Director of the Emergency Medical Services Hospital at Preston Hall Sanatorium, Maidstone, and I worked with him until my transfer to Bournemouth as Medical Superintendent of Douglas House Sanatorium in 1943, but we remained in contact with each other for some years. 

In 1946, he was head of a hospital in Palestine near Jerusalem and was a frequent visitor to the King David Hotel; apparently he was there on the very day of the explosion and he wrote me that 'a warning' was passed on to the officers in the bar in rather jocular terms, implying it was 'Jewish terrorist bluff'. But despite advice to 'ignore the bluff' he decided to leave and thus was out of the hotel when the explosion took place. I kept his letter for many years, but unfortunately, after the death of my wife in 1970 and my own severe illness in 1971, I sold my house and went into a flat and because of limited space I unwisely threw away a lot of my accumulated papers and correspondence, so the letter is no longer available; and Brigadier Skelton has long since died. I hope these facts will be of some help to you. Many of my friends knew this story at the time but few have survived; my sister-in-law will remember it clearly as she was friendly with the Brigadier and lived with us at the time. If you think it worth-while, I could contact her"— I did ask him to contact her and she wrote a letter confirming what Dr. Crawford said.

As your Lordships are well aware, I do not approve of terrorists of any kind. The Prime Minister of Israel explained a few days ago what happened and I hope that the letter I have read out now will, in all fairness, answer the accusation that has been made about this incident. I am very grateful for the attention the House has given me.

And remarks by Menachem Begin as published in Benjamin Netanyahu, ed., "International Terrorism: Challenge And Response," Proceedings of the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism, July 2­5, 1979, (Jerusalem: The Jonathan Institute, 1980), p. 45 (thanks to DaledAmos)

And see here in 2006.

From a personal reminisce:

"I was having a coffee with a friend when the first minor bomb went off. "I didn’t think much of it at the time because this sort of thing was happening every day...I was sitting by the window when the second bomb went off. It blew the window out completely and threw me across the room."

^

Hagana's Hypocrisy

As a result of the explosion on July 22, 1946 in the southern wing of the King David Hotel, the section that since 1939 had housed various government and army offices (only in the northern wing were there tourists and other civilians who were not targeted and not harmed), over 90 persons were killed, the majority of them employees or members of the Mandate government.

Despite the fact that the Irgun had not intended that anyone would be physically harmed and had made efforts to assure that warnings would be made, indirectly (releasing the kitchen staff; igniting a firewall in St. Julian's Way (today, King David Street); and tossing petards) and directly (phone calls to the hotel and police, as well as to the French Consulate), and despite Menachem Begin expressing regrets at the loss of life, the Irgun and Begin are vilified and castigated until this day.

The left-wing in Israel, and the Jewish people, never stop pointing an accusatory and damming finger.

But consider this:

On November 25, 1940, an installation in Palestine was attacked by a Jewish underground militia. The result of the explosion caused the deaths of almost 300 civilians with only 209 bodies recovered.

Are the perpetrators damned in the history books?  Is their deed recalled every year like with the King David Hotel?

No. 

Probably the fact that those who carried out the operation were members of the Hagana.

I am referring to the sinking of the Patria, a French-built 11,885-tin ocean liner.  The Patria 

was carrying about 1,800 Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe whom the British authorities were deporting from Mandatory Palestine to Mauritius because they lacked entry permits. Zionist organizations opposed the deportation, and the underground paramilitary Haganah group planted a bomb intended to disable the ship to prevent it from leaving Haifa.

The Haganah claims to have miscalculated the effects of the explosion.

As one can now read at Wikipedia:

A bitter debate over the correctness of the operation raged in secret within the Zionist leadership...An effort was made to enshrine the incident as an icon of Zionist determination...Some leaders of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) argued that the loss of life had not been in vain, as Patria's survivors had been allowed to stay in the country. Others declared that the Haganah had had no right to risk the lives of the immigrants...The Haganah's role was not publicly revealed and a story was put out that the deportees, out of despair, had sunk the ship themselves...Britain believed the Irgun was probably responsible.
The Haganah's role was finally publicly disclosed in 1957 when Munya Mardor, the operative who had planted the bomb, wrote an account of his activities in the Jewish underground. He recounted, "There was never any intent to cause the ship to sink...

Hypocrisy of the left vs. the right in Zionism?

^ 

The King David Hotel Operation, Again

The Daily Mirror took advantage of Britain's Prince William's stay at the King David Hotel to cover the Irgun operation in 1946 when the southern wing was severely damaged and nearly 100 persons were killed.

The story by Steve Myall, the paper's Deputy Features editor, 

highlights the paper's correspondent in Mandate Palestine at the time, Barbara Broad, who was at the entrance of the hotel when the blast occurred.

The story does have its problems.  For example, we read that

The militia viewed the King David Hotel as a strategic target because it housed the British administrative headquarters

First of all, what was targeted was the southern wing, not the entire hotel. The northern wing was the "civilian" section where tourists stayed and was not harmed.  In constantly writing "the King David Hotel", the reader receives the impression that the entire hotel was intended to be damaged.

Even when the distinction is made, as here:

The entire southern wing of the hotel – all seven floors – was totally destroyed.

the accompanying photographs

obviously show that the main damage, while considerate, for sure, was to the front section of the wing and that the eastern part, to the rear, remained standing.

Moreover, only a careful reader would catch reading the story that the southern wing also housed the HQ of the British Army in the country, quite a legitimate military target.

But what is really diabolical in Ms. Broad's account, faithfully and uncritically copied by Myall, is here:

the diabolical thoroughness with which Jewish terrorists planned this brutal and bloody attack was made clear to me by a senior Air Force and Army officer.  Half an hour before the main explosion, a jeep, full of Jewish terrorists armed with tommy guns, drove up the curving entrance way to the King David Hotel, the right wing of which houses the Secretariat, with British Military HQ on the top floor.

One lone shot rang out as they penetrated past the ring of sentries.  There was a pause and then a volley of machine gun fire. A few moments later a diversionary mine was exploded on tire pavement opposite the Secretariat, and a warning was rushed to headquarters that all troops, ATS and officers must move up to the top of the building.

The warning was in time for most of headquarters staff, but the Secretariat employees rushed to the windows to see the military and police activity in the street below.  The terrorists had reckoned on this, for at that moment the main explosion took place while they made off in a taxi.

No jeep drove up to the entrance. There was no exchange of fire.  

Some 25 minutes before the explosion (more about this 25 minutes below), the Irgun fighters retreated from the basement after placing the explosives around the central pillar of the Cafe Régence. Spotted by the paras on the roof (the building then was only five stories high), having been alerted by a telephone operator in the basement, they were fired on. One Irgunist eventually bled to death in an Old City hideout overnight.. The entrance to the hotel was facilitated by the adoption of a disguise in that the penetration team dressed as Arab porters who were to deliver the daily dairy supplies of milk, cheese, cream and labaniya. No frontal assault was conducted.

But there is a contradiction to the normative version that no warning was given.  There was. Not only should a fire-fight be enough of a warning and not only does the above section read explicitly that a warning was given to evacuate by someone British, but we then read:

For reasons that have never been clarified, the staff of the government secretariat and military command remained in their rooms despite the warning calls.

Whose fault and responsibility was that?  The Irgun's? Or the British? The French staff at their Consulate just down the road did open their windows. Shaw always denied receiving a warning.

One last point in that connection: that 25 minutes vs. the planned 30, actually 45, minutes.

Despite Thurston Clarke's excellent retelling, almost minute-by-minute, 

Joseph Evron's book, Gidi: One Chasing a Thousand, is a must.  (And see from p.96 here)

On page 179, referencing documents HHA 1049/112 (42)  and (43) and (52) in the Hagana Archives, one discovers that a bomb-disposal unit had been alerted (!) and sent to the hotel. The Davar newspaper reported this openly the day following the explosion. 

On p. 176, the Irgunist who fixed the timing mechanism, which had been set for 45 minutes and not 30, intimates that someone had attempted to defuse the explosives.

Given that he had set a mercury initiator anti-defusing device to prevent just such an attempt, the fact that the bombs ignited prematurely meant to him that (a) the British knew the bombs where in the building; (b) where they were; (c) what potential damage existed;  and (d) that they gave no proper advance order to orderly evacuate.

Moreover, the fact that the British had an agent in the Irgun, who just happened to be second-in-command, is the real story here. Expecting to be forewarned by him, they perhaps were semi-hesitant when no message came through from him.

One last point: the operation was granted preliminary approval by the joint X Committee of the United Resistance Movement on May 15 that year and the go-ahead operational order was issued to Menachem Begin on July 1 by Moshe Sneh, Head of the Hagana Command and Yitzhak Sadeh, operations officer of the Palmach, approved the plans.

The mirror need be held up to the British officials and officers in the hotel at the time.

Thanks to MP for alerting me.

^

Lipman Seethes Wrongly

Some persons just do not know the facts.

Take this lady, Jennifer Lipman, who writes:

...As always, my shul's mid-afternoon Question and Answer session was packed with hungry but engaged congregants. One query in particular prompted a lengthy response from the rabbi. In it, he referred to British Mandate Palestine and those Jews whose fight for statehood saw them join the militant Irgun group. "They weren't terrorists," went his argument. "It was a different time and they were fighting for their freedom."

Really? I thought, my blood boiling (never good on a fast day). Oh yes, I'm sure their cause and the context would have been of great comfort to the families of the 91 people who died in 1946 when the Irgun bombed the King David Hotel.

More to the point, doesn't that argument sound familiar? Isn't it essentially the defence used today by extremist groups after a blast on a bus in Israel or a random attack in the West Bank? If we condemn it now, we cannot excuse it in history.

I left the session seething with anger and disbelief but, most of all, with disappointment. Was it intentional moral relativism or just a short memory? I can't speak for the rabbi - perhaps he simply said the first thing that came to mind- but it makes little difference. It is irresponsible, not to mention dangerous and counter-productive, to use the bully pulpit to spread a limited or even false view of events. That is always true, but it is especially so with a subject as sensitive as the Israeli-Arab conflict...

Since any simple Google-search could have provided the lady with the facts, allow me to be short and to the point as this issue comes up a dozen times a year if not more and it is so terrible that Jews fall for Arab propaganda when they should know better (unless, of course, they are radical leftwing bolshie progressives who are anti-Zionist to begin with - no pun there - which I do not think the lady is).

1. The King David Hotel operation was initiated by Moshe Sneh of the Hagana following a May 15th meeting of the Joint Operations Committee of the United Resistance Movement when the plan was authorized in principle and following the 'Black Sabbath' search & arrest action by the British. Due to Sneh's resignation because of pressure from the more moderate wing, delays were requested but left unexplained for Begin.

2. The "Hotel" was not attacked. What was targeted was the southern wing which had been expropriated by the Bristish Mandatory regime as early as 1938. By 1946, the entire wing housed the Mandatory secretariat offices, in other words, the government, as well as the HQ of the British Army, then numbering almost 100,000 troops, in the country. It was a legitimate target for an urban guerrilla liberation group. It was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and a platoon of Paras.

3. All possible attempts to warn those inside were made including: a 30 minute delay of the fuses; the throwing of petards and setting alight two firewalls on the street in front of the Hotel on both approaches; three phboe calls were made to the French Consulate, the editorial offices of the Palestine Post and the Hotel itself. They were received. Why the British did not act is a mystery.

4. In summation, any comparison between this operation, and hundreds of others with any Arab terror group killing Israeli civilians is horrific, immoral and insensible as well as displaying a woeful lack of knowledge.

Any anger or disbelief directed at Lipman would be quite in order.  Any seething as well.  Memory?  She has none.  Relativism of morality?  Biased.

There is no excuse for her outlook and presentation of opinion.  All wrong.

Of course, if we review the actions of the British, and I suggest to her Bernard Wasserstein's book, Gt. Britian and the Jews of Europe, not only because of the book's content damning British officialdom in indriect collaboration with the Nazis in allowing millions to die in Nazi Europe, but because Wasserstein is far left in his politics so I presume he would be kosher enough for Ms. Lipman.

Has she now learned her lesson and is controlling her anger?

^

Dust Sky in Jerusaelm

We've had fog in Jerusalem,

and we've had cloudy skies,

and we've had snowy skies

And now, we have had dust skies:

a) looking towards the King David Hotel-


b) looking towards Mt. Zion -


c) looking towards the hidden Jaffa Gate -

Not 1946

No, this wasn't snapped in 1946, when the King David Hotel was bombed.

There was a fire yesterday near the hotel and I took it from Emek Refaim Street.

The Bush Fog

President Bush wanted to watch the sun rising over the Old City Walls in Jerusalem this morning.

He couldn't. They were enclosed in a fog.







Even the King David Hotel disappeared.



(All pictures taken by yours truly from the balcony of the Menachem Begin Heritage Center just down the block from the King David Hotel)