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Book Review
By Blood and Fire
By Blood and Fire: The Attack on the King David Hotel, by Thurston Clarke, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1981, Hardcover.
Review by W. R. Silberstein
The south side of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, in the aftermath of the terrorist bombing of July 22, 1946.
In these days of erotic fiction and strange “documentaries” on the market, it is rewarding to read an excellent non-fiction book on a little known subject that hasn’t been widely documented. By Blood and Fire is virtually a scenario of one of the most contemptible acts of unmitigated murder by terrorism of the Twentieth Century; the 1946 deliberate bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
Author Thurston Clarke, who’s other literary credits are The Last Caravan and Dirty Money, has done a masterful job in research of a painful subject that places the blame for this horrible terrorist attack on the present [1982] Prime Minster of Israel, Menahem Begin.
At just past noon on July 22, 1946, six members of Begin’s Irgun zvai leumi organization crept into the basement entrance of the King David Hotel, placed seven steel milk churns filled with gelignite and TNT in the popular Regency Bar, which then blew up the entire south wing of the hotel, killing 91, including British civil servants, Arabs and Jews, and injuring 46. The reasoning behind such an act is as strange as the acts of terrorism committed by Jews and Arabs in Palestine today. What these murders accomplish seems to be a mute question. Any mention of this bombing attack to Prime Minister Begin today brings on stony silence accompanied by a statement, “they were given a warning beforehand.”
Menachem Begin speaking at a political rally in Israel, 1948. In front is the emblem of the “Herut” (“Freedom”) party, which he led. Begin was later prime minister of Israel, 1977-1983.
Much of the value of this book lies in the chronology — the time table of events by these “soldiers” of the terrorist Irgun. The book goes into detail about how Begin, the Irgun commander-in-chief, disregarded the pleas of the Haganah and the powerful “X Committee.” Even Dr. Chaim Weizmann, chief of the country’s Zionist movement, pleaded against acts of terrorism against the British “caretaker” rulers of Palestine.
The six-story King David Hotel was one of Jerusalem’s most popular meeting places. The British administrative offices were in the south wing of the hotel, and those employed there were innocent British civil servants including 17 Jews, all of whom were murdered in the tremendous blast. It is difficult to understand the rationale of such an act, except to remember that the Arabs outnumbered the Jews, and it is still an enigma as to “whom does Palestine belong?”
Because of all the Arab and Jewish unrest in 1939, when thousands of Jews “emigrated” to the country, the caretaker government of Britain issued a White Paper stating that, as Clarke notes, “no more than 75,000 Jews would be allowed to immigrate into Palestine in the coming five years.” This declaration was as unpopular both with the resident Arabs and the invading Jews, and brought about terrorism toward the British from Jew and Arab alike. Following Hitler’s passage of a law allowing German nationals to repurchase their commercial and residential property at the same price they were forced to sell to wealthy Jews after World War I, German Jews were stripped of their financial power and left Germany in droves to migrate to Palestine, against the wishes of the British government.
Thurston Clarke walks a tightrope depicting the objectives of both Arabs and Jews, as well as British interests. He takes no sides, and makes use of documented evidence and eye witness accounts of the bombing.
Excellent photographs, maps and diagrams are included in the book.
From The Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1982 (Vol. 3, No. 1), pages 88-89.