Hasan Suroor
If any form of violence that kills innocent people is terrorism as Israel insists then its bombing of the King David hotel was an act of terror which it should condemn rather than celebrate.
ON SATURDAY, even as Israel and its Western allies were condemning Hamas and Hizbollah "terrorists," in Jerusalem a right-wing group of influential Israelis, including the former Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, was celebrating one of the worst acts of terrorism against Britain in a foreign land: the 60th anniversary of the bombing, on July 22, 1946, of the King David Hotel, the headquarters of the British Government's representatives in the region.
More than 90 innocent people, including 28 Britons, were killed in the bombing carried out by Irgun, the Jewish group, which under the leadership of Menachem Begin (later to become Israel's Prime Minister) led a violent resistance against the British mandate in Palestine.
The celebrations, held under the very nose of the Israeli Government, went ahead despite official British protests.
"We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated," Britain's Ambassador to Israel, Simon McDonald, and its consul-general in Jerusalem, John Jenkins, said in a letter to the local administration.
The most controversial feature of the celebrations, spread over two days, was the unveiling of a plaque outside the hotel hailing the supposedly heroic act of "Irgun fighters." It provoked anger in Britain with indignant observers accusing the Israeli government of ignoring London's sensitivities. They said that if the Israeli Government wished it could have stopped the event. They rejected Irgun's claim, articulated among others by Mr. Netanyahu, that those who carried out the atrocity were "freedom fighters."
The Times, which recalled branding Irgun activists "terrorists in disguise" at the time, said the celebrations went to "the heart of the debate over the use of political violence in the Middle East." It noted that the surviving Irgun veterans were "unrepentant" and quoted Sarah Agassi, 80, who collaborated with the bombers as saying that if she had to fight for Israel "I swear even now I would do anything."
Anger in Britain
There was anger in Britain that, let alone expressing regret for the dastardly attack, the group behind the celebrations tried to blame the British authorities for the loss of lives claiming that they had been warned but did not evacuate the hotel.
In their protest letter to the Israeli administration, Mr. McDonald and Mr. Jenkins said there was no "credible" evidence that any warning was given and pointed out that even it was, "this does not absolve those who planted the bomb from responsibility for the deaths."
But the protest was largely ignored and the commemoration plaque unveiled on the occasion retained much of the Irgun's account insisting that ... "warning phone calls had been made to the hotel, the Palestine Post and the French Consulate, urging the hotel's occupants to leave immediately. The hotel was not evacuated and after 25 minutes the bombs exploded."
The only substantive concession to British sensitivities was dropping some words from the original version, which had said that "for reasons known only to the British, the hotel was not evacuated..."
Even staunchly pro-Israel newspapers such as The Telegraph sounded angry noting that "Israel's celebration of its `freedom fighters' remains highly controversial at a time when it continues to pound Palestinian `terrorists.'" It highlighted Britain's accusation that Israel was "feting Jewish terrorists" and said that the controversy reopened the debate about the use of "politically-inspired violence" in the region.
Media reports took note of Mr. Netanyahu's outspoken public support for the celebrations and the fact that the father of Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was Irgun's chief operations officer at the time of the bombing an indication of the group's influence in Israel's political establishment.
The controversy came in a week when, ironically, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was working overtime to portray Israel as a victim of terror and justify its murderous assaults on Lebanon in pursuit of "terrorists." Responding to calls for his government to intervene, he told MPs, rhetorically, that unfortunately he had rather "limited" influence on Hizbollah and Hamas.
Given the contempt with which Israel dismissed his Government's protests over the July 22 embarrassment it would seem that he has even less influence over his friends in Tel Aviv.
Incidentally, Mr. Netanyahu and his Irgun comrades might have found themselves behind bars if they had attempted something similar in Britain thanks to a new law that Mr. Blair has brought in, making it a criminal offence to "glorify" acts of terror.
But what this episode does is to bring us back to that old question: what constitutes terrorism? If any form of violence that kills innocent people, irrespective of the merit of the cause, is terrorism as Israel insists in relation to Palestinian-sponsored violence then its bombing of the King David Hotel was an act of terror which it should condemn rather than celebrate. If, on the other hand, it was a legitimate political act to drive out the British, then how does the Hamas/Hizbollah brand of violence aimed at freeing their occupied land become terrorism? Certainly, even Israel which tends to get away with a lot of things other "normal" states will not be allowed to cannot have it both ways.




