The Apartheid State of Israel

"The wealthy, crowded progressive Jewish State lies in the plains, and on the areas outside Palestine, around it in the hills and the uplands, stretching far and wide into the illimitable deserts, the warlike Arabs of Syria, of Trans-Jordan, of Arabia, backed by the armed forces of Iraq, offer the ceaseless menace of war. 

To maintain itself, the Jewish State must be armed to the teeth, and must bring in every available able-bodied man to strengthen its army. 

But how long would this process be allowed to continue by the great Arab populations in Iraq and Palestine? 

Can it be expected that the Arabs will stand by impassively and watch the building up with Jewish world capital and resources of a Jewish army equipped with the most deadly weapons of war until it was strong enough not to be afraid of them? 

And if ever the Jewish army reached that point, who can be sure that cramped within their narrow limits, they would not plunge out into the new undeveloped lands that lie around them?.

If Palestine should be partitioned’, he concluded, ‘I find it difficult to resist the conclusion that the steam would lead inevitably to the complete evacuation of Palestine by Great Britain."

Winston Churchill, 1937

"Irgun is in fact rapidly becoming the 'SS' of the new state. There is also a strong 'Gestapo' – but no-one knows who is in it.

'The shopkeepers are afraid not so much of shells as of raids by Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang. These young toughs, who are beyond whatever law there is have cleaned out most private houses of the richer classes & started to prey upon the shopkeepers.' "

—Clare Hollingworth reporting on West Jerusalem June 2, 1948

In 2006, Simon McDonald, the British ambassador in Tel Aviv, and John Jenkins, the Consul-General in Jerusalem, wrote in response to a pro-Irgun commemoration of the King David Hotel bombing: 

"We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated." 

They also called for the removal of plaques at the site which presented as a fact that the deaths were due to the British ignoring warning calls. 

The plaques, in their original version, read:

"Warning phone calls had been made urging the hotel's occupants to leave immediately. For reasons known only to the British the hotel was not evacuated and after 25 minutes the bombs exploded, and to the Irgun's regret and dismay 91 persons were killed."

McDonald and Jenkins said that no such warning calls were made, adding that even if they had, 

"this does not absolve those who planted the bomb from responsibility for the deaths."