22nd July - UK protests as Israel celebrates 60th Anniversary of its own terrorist attack on British Forces

From an article published today in the Hereetz newspaper, The spirit of the King David Hotel by Tom Segev

The 1946 terror attack on Bristish forces by the Etzel Zionist armed group at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem was in its day the equivalent of the Twin Towers. Yesterday was its 60th anniversary and a new plaque was put up at the hotel to mark the occasion.

The issue is what is a terrorist and what is a freedom fighter. "Nearly every terrorist defines himself as a freedom fighter, and vice versa: freedom fighters are usually defined as terrorists". Begin took part in this action and later became a Prime Minister of Israael. " He invested a lot of effort to convince history that he was not a terrorist. Among other things, he emphasized that his organization did not harm civilians. That's a thesis that could serve as an historic lesson from a moral standpoint: not harming civilians. "

The new plaque identifies the perpetrators of the attack as 'Etzel fighters.' It explains they phoned the hotel switchboard to warn them that a bomb was about to go off... but something went wrong. Twenty-five minutes went by and then 'for some reason' the British did not evacuate the building 'and as a result' 91 people were 'regrettably' killed. There were 28 British, 41 Arabs, 17 Jews and five others. "

"The British government is demanding the plaque's removal. Her Majesty's ambassador and the consul have written to the mayor of Jerusalem that such an act of terror cannot be honored, even if it was preceded by a warning. To this day, it is not clear what made the bombing's planners believe the British would evacuate the building. Would Benjamin Netanyahu, as prime minister, have ordered his bureau evacuated on the basis of telephone threat from a Palestinian terror group? "

Netanyahu (the right wing leader of the Likud party who is bitterly anti-Palestinian - as can be seen from his Website) spoke at the conference and exlained that "The difference between a terrorist operation and a legitimate military action is expressed in the fact that the terrorists intend to harm civilians whereas legitimate combatants try to avoid that. But then, according to that theory, the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by a Palestinian organization is a legitimate military operation, and the bombing of Dresden, Hanoi, Haifa or Beirut is a war crime. Of course this is not what Netanyahu meant.

What he meant was that the "Arabs are bad and we are good. Arab actions starting in 1920 and through the Iranian nuclear plan reflect, in his words, "a terrorist mentality." Israel, on the other hand, only harms civilians by accident or when there is no alternative. For example, when terrorists hide among civilians.

"The historic truth is different: In the 60 years since the attack at the King David Hotel, Israel has hurt some two million civilians, including 750,000 who lost their homes in 1948, another quarter million Palestinians who were forced to leave the West Bank in the Six-Day War and hundreds of thousands of Egyptian civilians who were expelled from the cities along the Suez Canal during the War of Attrition. And now tens of thousands of Lebanese villagers are being forced to abandon their homes, and air force pilots are once again bombing Beirut and other cities. Hundreds of civilians have been killed. Regrettably. It?s all in the spirit of the King David Hotel. One can always say there was a mishap."