JERUSALEM, July 21: As Israeli warplanes and artillery pound Lebanon and the Gaza Strip to try to destroy ‘terrorist’ networks, Britain has protested about the commemoration of a Jerusalem hotel bombing 60 years ago that it views as a Jewish act of terror.

Ninety-one people, mostly civilians, were killed when Irgun, an underground Zionist group seeking to overthrow British rule in Palestine, planted bombs in the King David Hotel on July 22, 1946.

The hotel housed the British authorities, their military command and a branch of the police.

This week a conference was held to commemorate the attack by the group led by Menachem Begin, who would later become Israeli prime minister. A tour was also offered of the plush hotel by some of the team members — now pensioners — involved in the bombing.

But the British embassy condemned the events organised by the Menachem Begin Centre.

“We just don’t think it’s right to commemorate an act of terrorism,” spokeswoman Karen Kaufman said.

The embassy was particularly incensed by a commemorative plaque put up outside the King David, today one of Jerusalem’s top hotels, that said so many people had died because British officials ignored an Irgun telephone warning before the bomb exploded.

There is no “credible evidence” that this was the case, said Kaufman, who dismissed the idea that British authorities were in any way responsible for the deaths.

The British ambassador complained to the hotel management and to local authorities, and eventually succeeded in getting the wording on the plaque changed.

It now states that “warning phone calls had been made to the hotel... urging the hotels occupants to leave immediately,” but no longer explicitly says that the British ignored the warning.

The bombing was the deadliest single attack against the British in the history of the Mandate of Palestine, which began after World War I and included the modern territories of Israel, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Among the dead were Britons, Jews and Arabs.

Sarah Agassi says it was she who telephoned the warning to the King David in 1946 after her Irgun colleagues — dressed as Arabs — carried the bombs hidden in milk churns into the hotel.

“I think they didn’t believe we had put a bomb,” she told AFP by telephone from her home in Tel Aviv.

She said the British official she spoke to refused to evacuate the hotel, telling her that “we don’t take orders from Jews”.

Agassi, who says she is now “approximately 80”, rejects any idea that the bombing was an act of terrorism.

“It was not terror. We fought for our independence. We wanted the British to leave. They (Irgun) gave me an order. I carried it out. Like a soldier.”

She flatly rejected any parallels between the Jewish campaign that led to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and Palestinian militants who use violence to protest against Israeli occupation and to win a state of their own.

“The Palestinians can go to other countries. This is our land. You can read that in the Bible,” Agassi said.

For most Israelis, Palestinian attacks are acts of terror and not those of freedom fighters.

Former rightwing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a speech at this week’s King David bombing commemorative conference titled “Between Freedom Fighters and Terrorists”.

He argued that Hamas, the Islamist party that now governs the Palestinian territories, and the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah were terrorists lacking morals.

Netanyahu said that unlike the heroic Jewish fighters of the past, Hamas and Hezbollah would never contemplate phoning a warning before they carried out an attack. —AFP