[link|http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/bombing_of_the_king_david_hotel.htm|The bombing of the King David Hotel] occurred in July 1946 and some saw it as a pivotal moment in recent Middle East history. The King David Hotel was the site for the British Military Command in Palestine. It also served as the headquarters of the British Criminal Investigation Division. The bombing of the hotel galvanised the British into realising that their time in Palestine was coming to an end.

On June 29th 1946, the British unexpectedly entered the premises of the Jewish Agency and took away with them a large number of documents \ufffd some of which were deemed to be sensitive. All the documents were taken to the King David Hotel where they were to be assessed by intelligence analysts. At around the same time, the British arrested 2,500 Jews in Palestine. Irgun, a Jewish secret organisation (deemed to be a terrorist group by the British) decided to target the hotel for vengeance and also as a way of destroying the documents that had been taken by the British.

The leader of Irgun, Menachem Begin, claimed that Irgun saw the hotel solely as a military building \ufffd and therefore a legitimate target. Begin claimed that three warnings were sent out on July 22nd 1946 about the planned attack to keep casualties to the minimum. Begin claimed that three phone calls were made to a) to the French Consulate b) to the hotel itself and c) to the "Palestine Post".

Any warnings were to no avail. The British did not evacuate the hotel and the bombing killed 91 people and injured 45. Ironically, few people in the hotel itself were killed \ufffd and Jews were among the casualties.