Historical Dictionary of Israeli Intelligence

A week later, news of a massacre of 40 Jews in a pogrom in Poland

reminded the Jews of Palestine how Britain’s restrictive immigration

policy had condemned thousands of Jews to death in Europe.

Begin stressed his desire to avoid civilian casualties and said later

that three telephone calls had been made on 22 July 1946: one to the

French Consulate in Jerusalem, another to the Palestine Postnews-

paper offices, and a third to the King David Hotel itself, warning that

explosives there were about to be detonated. This call was apparently

received and ignored. Begin quotes one British official who suppos-

edly refused to evacuate the building, as saying, “We don’t take or-

ders from the Jews.” Casualties in the hotel wing were accordingly

high after the blast: 91 killed and 45 injured. Among the casualties

were 15 Jews. Some people in the hotel proper were likewise injured.

Early Arab Terrorism.The origins of Palestinian-Arab terrorism go

back to the Ottoman period when the Jewish community of Palestine

lived under the shadow of a few wealthy effendifamilies. These fam-

ilies, most prominently the Husseinis and the Nashashibis, hired

criminals to attack Jews who threatened rental prices by living out-

side the Jerusalem city walls.

After the establishment of the British Mandate in Palestine, the influx

of Jews increased dramatically, a result of the persecution of Jews in Eu-

rope as well as the flowering of the Zionist idea. Now, instead of the

steady but manageable stream of Jews into Palestine since the 1880s,

the Palestinian Arabs began to feel that they were on their way to be-

coming a minority; at that point, their leadership turned to violence,

hoping to compel the British administration to limit further Jewish im-

migration.

This tactic proved successful after the Jerusalem pogrom of April

1920, an attack on the old (i.e., pre-Zionist) Yishuv incited by Haj

Amin Al-Husseini (subsequently the grand mufti of Jerusalem). The

British accused the Zionists of provoking the assault, arrested their

leadership, and indeed halted Jewish immigration. Next, in the after-

math of the riots of May 1921 and a change in administrators of the

British Mandate, the Palestine government headed by High Commis-

sioner Herbert Samuel changed its policy on the promise to establish a

Jewish National Home in Palestine—the factor behind the mandate

granted to the British by the League of Nations—by determining future

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