King David Hotel Bombing - Terrorist Attack or Not?

[Joe Republic]

To the 'no' voters; what's your opinion on the various IRA bombings over the decades?  Justified as well?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Indy, it often is the case that one man's terrorists are another man's freedom fighters, which is why tho I strongly disagree with those who don't think this bombing was a terrorist attack, I can respect what causes them to so think.  I have no respect for what caused you to make your "joke".

[Horus]

Agreed, might as well lock it. Apparently the results of my ancestry test are too offensive for SAtW.

[bagelman]

nothing here but racists arguing with each other. lock pls.

[NeverAgain]

Sorry it had to come to this... I wouldn't have guessed this would become an argument over antisemitism. I'll go for less controversial polls next time. Sorry y'all!

[Antonio the Sixth]

What the actual f**k?

[Joe Republic]

Sorry it had to come to this... I wouldn't have guessed this would become an argument over antisemitism.

They usually do whenever DavidB shows up...

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

To the 'no' voters; what's your opinion on the various IRA bombings over the decades?  Justified as well?

"Terrorist attack" carries no inherent moral weight.

[Ebowed]

This is a train wreck.

Don't be a racist.  Don't be an anti-Semite.  Don't pretend that terrorism is justifiable.

JFC

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

This is a train wreck.

Don't be a racist.  Don't be an anti-Semite.  Don't pretend that terrorism is justifiable.

JFC

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

[Goldwater]

This is a train wreck.

Don't be a racist.  Don't be an anti-Semite.  Don't pretend that terrorism is justifiable.

JFC

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Indeed. Unless you are actually a pacifist, I assume there must be some sort of hypothetical situation where you would consider a terrorist attack at least somewhat justifiable.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

So Indy Texas is the forum's new resident Nazi. I bet that will make Enzinge steam.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

This is a train wreck.

Don't be a racist.  Don't be an anti-Semite.  Don't pretend that terrorism is justifiable.

JFC

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Indeed. Unless you are actually a pacifist, I assume there must be some sort of hypothetical situation where you would consider a terrorist attack at least somewhat justifiable.

Recklessly attacking civilians is not acceptable. Blow up a military base? Okay, I can accept it as a terrorist attack as part of a broader conflict. Blow up a hotel with the significant chance you're going to kill tons of civilians present? That's unacceptable, to me at least. As unacceptable as attacking civilians outright, ethnicity and religion be damned. Assasinating Michael O'Dwyer in 1940? Justice. The massacres of non-combatant English people carried out during the Sepoy Mutiny (yeah okay this would be more war than terrorism)? Completely wrong. Mass terrorism is always wrong.

78 civilians for 13 soldiers? That's an embarrassing failure.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Wow. That escalated quickly.

[MalaspinaGold]

This thread's amazing.

Anyway, yes it was terrorism, I don't think anyone denied that (with the exception of Sunrise and his argument was very low-energy). This of course leads to the crux of the case, whether or not it was in fact justified, but more importantly, are terrorist attacks ever justifiable. The answer to the second question is obviously yes, as Crabcake points out (and yes the ANC military wing did target civilian locations- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe#Bombings)

As to the question of whether the IRA bombings are also justified: I'd argue that they could be, depending on one's own political beliefs. I certainly wouldn't tell an Irish person that violence against soft targets is never the answer, in part because I wouldn't want taking the same attittude toward Jewish partisans fighting Hitler. I would be interested in hearing DavidB's take on the IRA though, simply because many settlers of his mold that I know tend to be intensely anti-British in general and would likely support a United Ireland.

Mind you that none of this of *justifies* the King David bombing, it just shows that a justification/rationalization is possible. If one shares the same ideological goals as the parties responsible, one's threshold for rationalization will naturally be lower.

Of course, no one's hit the real weak point of DavidB's argument (except Ernest, briefly). Needless to say, I try and take a similar attitude to more ...err... contemporary perpetrators of such violence.

Oh and LOL IndyTX. That was absolute gold. 10/10. Wow

As for Horus, stop being such a fycking shiksa. If you really want to revel in your whiteness, that's fine, and very easy to do, just join a Lutheran church.

[MalaspinaGold]

If there had been no British mandate in Palestine, there never would have been Jewish emigration to Palestine on anything like the scale there was in the interwar years.  The options for the area following the Great War were either a British mandate or an Arab government which would have been even less welcoming to Jewish immigration than the British were.  An independent Jewish homeland c. 1920 was not achievable at all.

This is true, but it hardly legitimizes British colonization of the area, and much less their conduct in the area. Besides, it is not as if it was evident that there would be a Jewish state, since the British commitment to this idea seemed very shaky. Jewish fighters had to liberate the country.

Liberate a country from the people who were living there?  That's sort of like saying America was liberated from the Indians or that Britain was liberated from the Celts.

I'm surprised DavidB didn't respond to this, but no, the country wasn't liberated from the Palestinians, it was liberated from the British. And, looking at this sense, it bears more in common with an anti-colonial movement (Albeit a rather unique one that is hard to categorize), than a colonial one).

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Except a "Jewish" state thought up by Gentiles, its location chosen by gentiles, and built by gentiles wouldn't actually be a Jewish state, it would be a gentile state with Jews living in it to salve a guilty conscience. And furthermore, it treats the necessity of a Jewish national movement as something originating from the Holocaust, when in actuality it is anything but; virulent anti-semitism existed far before the Holocaust- indeed it would make just as much sense to set up a state in modern day Russia/Ukraine, except they won the war. Regardless, whatever you may think, Zionism is not supposed to be "revenge" on those that wronged the Jews; that in itself would be anti-Zionist.

Anyway, I'm not a fan of this reasoning (though I'm sure DavidB is, but it also would make sense to set up  a Jewish state where the original state-sponsored anti-semitism occurred- this would of course be the various anti-semitic crimes perpetrated by the Romans and those that came before them in Israel.

[tpfkaw]

If there had been no British mandate in Palestine, there never would have been Jewish emigration to Palestine on anything like the scale there was in the interwar years.  The options for the area following the Great War were either a British mandate or an Arab government which would have been even less welcoming to Jewish immigration than the British were.  An independent Jewish homeland c. 1920 was not achievable at all.

This is true, but it hardly legitimizes British colonization of the area, and much less their conduct in the area. Besides, it is not as if it was evident that there would be a Jewish state, since the British commitment to this idea seemed very shaky. Jewish fighters had to liberate the country.

Liberate a country from the people who were living there?  That's sort of like saying America was liberated from the Indians or that Britain was liberated from the Celts.

I'm surprised DavidB didn't respond to this, but no, the country wasn't liberated from the Palestinians, it was liberated from the British. And, looking at this sense, it bears more in common with an anti-colonial movement (Albeit a rather unique one that is hard to categorize), than a colonial one).

By your theory, from whom was Rhodesia liberated in 1965?

(And say what you want about the Ian Smith government; at least it made a good-faith effort to improve the lot in life of the indigenous population).

[MalaspinaGold]

If there had been no British mandate in Palestine, there never would have been Jewish emigration to Palestine on anything like the scale there was in the interwar years.  The options for the area following the Great War were either a British mandate or an Arab government which would have been even less welcoming to Jewish immigration than the British were.  An independent Jewish homeland c. 1920 was not achievable at all.

This is true, but it hardly legitimizes British colonization of the area, and much less their conduct in the area. Besides, it is not as if it was evident that there would be a Jewish state, since the British commitment to this idea seemed very shaky. Jewish fighters had to liberate the country.

Liberate a country from the people who were living there?  That's sort of like saying America was liberated from the Indians or that Britain was liberated from the Celts.

I'm surprised DavidB didn't respond to this, but no, the country wasn't liberated from the Palestinians, it was liberated from the British. And, looking at this sense, it bears more in common with an anti-colonial movement (Albeit a rather unique one that is hard to categorize), than a colonial one).

By your theory, from whom was Rhodesia liberated in 1965?

(And say what you want about the Ian Smith government; at least it made a good-faith effort to improve the lot in life of the indigenous population).

The British, but I think you're missing my point.

[tpfkaw]

The British, but I think you're missing my point.

Fair enough; I thought you were endorsing DavidB-ism.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Oh... wow. This thread literally reads like something on CiF now. Bleak.

As for DavidB's support for Irgun's crimes - whether this is evidence of hypocrisy or partisanship seems pretty immaterial, and I fail to see why the latter somehow makes it better.

Whether its better or worse isn't the point, just that a charge of hypocrisy is very weak when the person in question is not actually being a hypocrite.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I'm quite sympathetic to the idea of a Jewish homeland, but unlike DavidB, not with regard of the existing inhabitants of whatever area it was established in. (Tho a Jewish state carved out of Germany after World War II, say with a capital in ex-Nuremberg, would meet my sense of justice.)

Except a "Jewish" state thought up by Gentiles, its location chosen by gentiles, and built by gentiles wouldn't actually be a Jewish state, it would be a gentile state with Jews living in it to salve a guilty conscience. And furthermore, it treats the necessity of a Jewish national movement as something originating from the Holocaust, when in actuality it is anything but; virulent anti-semitism existed far before the Holocaust- indeed it would make just as much sense to set up a state in modern day Russia/Ukraine, except they won the war. Regardless, whatever you may think, Zionism is not supposed to be "revenge" on those that wronged the Jews; that in itself would be anti-Zionist.

Anyway, I'm not a fan of this reasoning (though I'm sure DavidB is, but it also would make sense to set up  a Jewish state where the original state-sponsored anti-semitism occurred- this would of course be the various anti-semitic crimes perpetrated by the Romans and those that came before them in Israel.

As I already stated, millennia old claims not backed up by more recent events don't hold sway with me. Palestine has not been a part of the Roman, Selucid, Babylonian, Assyrian, or Egyptian empires in quite some time. Maybe if Victor Emanuel had gotten his wish for Palestine to be an Italian mandate after the Great War your Roman idea would have a shred of merit, but even if that impossibility had occurred, justice does not involve taking an area inhabited by one group of people to a second group of people for the crimes of a third group of people. Absent the reason of restitution, there is no just reason for depriving a people of the land they inhabit.

In any case, the area is a mess; it will remain a mess for the immediate future; and while I hope the bloody end of Israel that I think will happen in a century or two when it collapses like the Crusader States of a millennium ago can be avoided, I doubt it. This looks to be a classic case of Santayana's maxim in action, but nothing we have to say will affect that.

[Lurker]

Oh... wow. This thread literally reads like something on CiF now. Bleak.

As for DavidB's support for Irgun's crimes - whether this is evidence of hypocrisy or partisanship seems pretty immaterial, and I fail to see why the latter somehow makes it better.

Whether its better or worse isn't the point, just that a charge of hypocrisy is very weak when the person in question is not actually being a hypocrite.

Yes, I should have seen the distinction earlier. Reading David's responses, I'm actually impressed with how little of a hypocrite he is, when compared to literally everyone with similarly extreme views on both sides of the conflict. It goes without saying that usually such partisans would do everything to whitewash the terrorism/crimes of their own side - claiming that such acts never happened, were in self defense, doing some whataboutery, etc. Whereas he easily accepts that such atrocities occured, but still think they were worth it (using the "omelette" analogy).

Come to think of it, the latter view is probably even more frightening IMO, but his honesty is commendable.

(Most of this is sort of off topic, clearly - but the thread is such an epic disaster anyway, so...)

[Torie]

Making broad, negative generalizations about any group in a hateful way is not acceptable, and you all are well aware of that. I have had to delete two posts and infract, and am pondering a third. I don't want to lock this thread, but I don't want it to go off the rails again. When it comes to the Middle East, many have strong passions and opinions, and I understand that. But that does not give one license to break our rules with impunity. Self restraint is required. And that applies to personal attacks too, and some posts are close to the line on that one as well. Thank you.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

Quite the mess, this thread is.

Anyway, I would have voted yes simply, because even terrorism in service of a totally just cause is terrorism. However, the fact that the Irgun tried to warn in advance and prevent casualties makes me think it was more of a guerrilla strike against a target. I don't know that something can truly be terrorism if it's only aiming for property destruction.

The tragic deaths that ensued are equally the fault of the ones who planted the bombs (despite their intentions) and the incredibly irresponsible British authorities.