Friday, August 1, 2008

By Blood & Fire July 22, 1946: The Attack on the King David Hotel by Thurston Clarke

I have heard of the King David 'terrorist attack' but I had little knowledge of what actually occurred and how it was pulled off. This book is an excellent description of those events and interweaves stories of those involved in the attack, including the attackers, those who would be wounded/killed, and those who would be witnesses. The planning that went off into pulling this operation off, why the King David was chosen, who was picked for the mission and why, etc, all of this is covered in more than enough detail and the story moves along at quite a quick pace.

One will have to rethink the idea of 'Jewish terrorism' when they read this book. I have never thought of 'Jewish terrorists' to be the equivalent of the terrorists the world has encountered in the past few decades. As the author points out, though, there are differences and quite a few similarities between the two.

But, it should be remembered that the men and women involved in the King David operation telephoned, three times, to warn those in the King David of what would happen. They were ignored and some consider the end result no longer their fault. The bottom line will remain that they targeted the building and what it stood for, rather than the innocent human beings inside it, and tried to minimize lives lost, unlike the terrorism of today. This will forever separate them, in my mind, from the Islamic terrorists the world over who choose to target innocent civilians, and the more the better.

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