The Arab/Israeli conflict is complex, fascinating, heartbreaking. One such incident amid those violent first years is the 1946 Kind David Hotel bombing in Jerusalem, which killed 91 people. The bombing was committed by the Irgun Zionist militant group in response to the British-led Operation Agatha. Over 10,000 British soldiers had raided various Jewish militant headquarters, arresting 2,700 in the process. The purpose was allegedly to find proof of official approval of various terrorist activities on the part of the Jewish Agency, which they did. The response from the Zionist terrorist groups was the King David bombing, which ironically proved British suspicions.
I’m neck deep in this history at the moment. I’ll be writing almost exclusively on this topic because it is fascinating, and also because no one knows anything about it. Terrorism is encoded in the DNA of modern-day Israel, but it didn’t have to be this way. There were movements to establish a peacefully-coexisting state, but those voices were overrun, and a violent ultra-nationalist, ethnocentric government was born.
