Friday, July 29, 2005
Anniversary of King David Hotel bombing by terrorists
Listener Chris Cruden wrote to us Friday July 22, 2005"
This morning a brief news item referred to the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Israel. The news item referred to the terrorists as Israeli underground fighters. This is totally inaccurate, the bombing was by terrorists and admitted as such by "Rabbi" Yzertinsky (Yitzhak Shamir, later the Prime Minister of Israel, his code name was "Rabbi")
After his release from prison, by the British, he justified his terrorist activities by stating “….. there are those who say that to kill Martin (Sgt Martin was his British arresting officer) is terrorism but, to attack an army camp is guerilla warfare and to bomb civilians is professional warfare, but I think it is the same from a moral point of view. Is it better to drop an atomic bomb on a city than to kill a handful of persons? I don’t think so. But nobody says that Truman was a terrorist. For us it was not a question of the professional honor of a soldier, it was a question of an idea, an aim that had to be achieved. We were aiming at a political goal. There are many examples of what we did to be found in the Bible, Gideon and Sampson, for example.”
The "idea" he quotes in the above statement is the sole of all terrorism and when we hypocritically attempt to justify terrorism we find acceptable, we consequently feed the cause (idea) of terrorism we find unacceptable. Sadly and regrettably we appear to feed the terrorists and their cause by all we do.
Here's a reply from NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin:
I checked with Morning Edition and indeed, in the program's "opening" where one of the hosts mentions what events occurred this day in history, the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 was mentioned. It was said that the act was committed by "the Jewish underground" and that more than 90 people were killed.
There is no doubt that this was an act of political terrorism committed by a group known as the Irgun whose members included future prime ministers of Israel such as Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin. The Irgun was a guerilla force that targeted the British occupation forces with the aim of driving them out of mandate Palestine in order to create an independent Jewish state.
In later years, apologists for the bombing said that the King David was a legitimate target because it was a military headquarters for the British Army in Mandate Palestine and that the Irgun phoned three warnings to the hotel which they said were ignored.
Yet there were civilian casualties among the mostly British military casualities. By today's standards, it was certainly an act of terrorism.
All of this is beyond the informational scope of the "opening" of the program. I have spoken to the editors to remind them that forty years later, the mentioning of certain events remains fraught with complexities that defies our usual journalistic shorthand.
Regards,
Jeffrey Dvorkin
NPR Ombudsman
This morning a brief news item referred to the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Israel. The news item referred to the terrorists as Israeli underground fighters. This is totally inaccurate, the bombing was by terrorists and admitted as such by "Rabbi" Yzertinsky (Yitzhak Shamir, later the Prime Minister of Israel, his code name was "Rabbi")
After his release from prison, by the British, he justified his terrorist activities by stating “….. there are those who say that to kill Martin (Sgt Martin was his British arresting officer) is terrorism but, to attack an army camp is guerilla warfare and to bomb civilians is professional warfare, but I think it is the same from a moral point of view. Is it better to drop an atomic bomb on a city than to kill a handful of persons? I don’t think so. But nobody says that Truman was a terrorist. For us it was not a question of the professional honor of a soldier, it was a question of an idea, an aim that had to be achieved. We were aiming at a political goal. There are many examples of what we did to be found in the Bible, Gideon and Sampson, for example.”
The "idea" he quotes in the above statement is the sole of all terrorism and when we hypocritically attempt to justify terrorism we find acceptable, we consequently feed the cause (idea) of terrorism we find unacceptable. Sadly and regrettably we appear to feed the terrorists and their cause by all we do.
Here's a reply from NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin:
I checked with Morning Edition and indeed, in the program's "opening" where one of the hosts mentions what events occurred this day in history, the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 was mentioned. It was said that the act was committed by "the Jewish underground" and that more than 90 people were killed.
There is no doubt that this was an act of political terrorism committed by a group known as the Irgun whose members included future prime ministers of Israel such as Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin. The Irgun was a guerilla force that targeted the British occupation forces with the aim of driving them out of mandate Palestine in order to create an independent Jewish state.
In later years, apologists for the bombing said that the King David was a legitimate target because it was a military headquarters for the British Army in Mandate Palestine and that the Irgun phoned three warnings to the hotel which they said were ignored.
Yet there were civilian casualties among the mostly British military casualities. By today's standards, it was certainly an act of terrorism.
All of this is beyond the informational scope of the "opening" of the program. I have spoken to the editors to remind them that forty years later, the mentioning of certain events remains fraught with complexities that defies our usual journalistic shorthand.
Regards,
Jeffrey Dvorkin
NPR Ombudsman
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