The Jews Introduced Terror into the Middle East

   Jews were victims of Arab terror long before the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel.  Perhaps the first recorded instance of Arab terror against the Jews was when the Meccan army exterminated the Jewish tribe of Quraiza.  In Syria, the infamous blood libel of 1840 brought about the death, torture, and pillage of countless Jews falsely accused of murdering a priest and his servant to collect the blood for Passover matzoth!  Arab terrorism was rampant during wave of anti-Jewish riots in 1920-21 (which was characterized by the brutal murder in Jaffa of the prominent Jewish author Y. Brenner), during the 'Disturbances' of 1929 (which included the massacre of the Jewish community in Hebron)

In his book, Days of Our Years, Dutch-Canadian journalist Pierre Van Passen described the violence ruthlessly incited by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini - an ally of Hitler - and his agents as well as the media bias of the time:

The Arab Higher Committee, the Mufti's political creation, sent out its bands of terrorists to ravage the land. This campaign of organized violence and destruction, which started in 1936, and which went on almost uninterruptedly for two years, was declared to be a spontaneous emanation of an exasperated Arabic national sentiment. Murderers and bandits who threw bombs into Jewish hospitals and orphan asylums, who killed from ambush and tore up young orange plantations in the night, were elevated to the rank of national heroes.

The Palestinian terrorism campaign was stepped-up on the eve of the UN Partition Resolution of November 1947, and led to the joint Arab invasion of 1948-49 which delineated the boundaries of the newly established State of Israel.

After the War of Independence, Arab terrorism expanded in scope. In 1952, when 'fedayeen' terrorist border incursions reached their height, there were about 3,000 incidents of cross-border violence, extending from the malicious destruction of property to the brutal murder of civilians. In the years 1951-1955, 503 Israelis were killed by Arab terrorists infiltrating from Jordan, 358 were killed in attacks from Egypt, and 61 were killed in attacks originating from Syria and Lebanon. This anti-Israeli violence encompassed both frontier settlements and population centers, and was perpetrated, for the most part, against innocent civilians.  The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued in March, 2002 a list of the major terror attacks occurring prior to Israel's possession of the disputed territories. 

   Arabs claim that Jews are guilty of terrorism to since the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel.  Why did the Irgun blow up the King David Hotel?  The British restricted immigration by Jews to their ancient homeland during World War II cutting off the escape route of European Jewry.  This led to Jewish resistance organizations fighting the British.  The King David Hotel was the site of the British military command and the British Criminal Investigation Division.  British troops invaded the Jewish Agency on June 29, 1946, and confiscated large quantities of documents.  The information about Jewish Agency operations, including intelligence activities in Arab countries, was taken to the King David Hotel.  At about the same time, more than 2,500 Jews from all over Palestine were placed under arrest. 

   The documents seized by the British had to be destroyed.  In order to prevent casualties three telephone calls were placed, one to the hotel, another to the French Consulate, and a third to the Palestine Post, warning that explosives in the King David Hotel would soon be detonated.  The British apparently did not believe the warnings.

   Perhaps a more disturbing question than why the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel is the question "Why did the British locate their military headquarters and investigation division in a civilian building?"