Letters
Once a terrorist
Sir West's piece under the above
title (23 October) implies that it be con- . always a terrorist'. But there is at fact no such proverbial saying, so far as I ani aware. Even if there were, I should maintain that it is improper to apply such an appellation to Menachem Begin. I, I happened to be in a barber's chair in a W rdressing salon on Julian's Way, as it
as then named, when the south-east wing the King David Hotel blew up in July
d-47. My hairdresser and I rushed to the door to see a huge cloud of dust and rubble Loating northwards, but it was not until my gaircut had been finished and I walked up hthe street that I discovered that the hotel had been the target. Later I learned that 97 „ad, been killed, British, Arabs (Christian ""d Muslim), Jews and others. 13 ittsh so happened that I was then acting therefore responsible for the burial of the badly victims, some of the bodies being could decomposed in the summer heat. Luld tell many personal stories relating to friends. s. There is a difference of opinion between bir John Shaw, then Chief Secretary of the leaders Government, and Mr Begin, then thader of the Irgun/Stern gang, regarding h"ls incident. Sir John still maintains, I thelieve. that no warning was given before hn.exPlosives (in milk cans driven in on a .::1°rrY) were detonated. Mr Begin insists we a warning was given, but ignored by e telephone receptionist, who thought it _ as but another of many hoaxes then being Perpetrated in that sadly unholy land.
„ The same sort of thing applies to another 144eedless slaughter, at Deir Yassin, in the villages days of the British Mandate. This modern on the western outskirts of the
for Jerusalem had been used as a base 137 terrorist raids into Jewish suburbs near- . The inhabitants were warned that, if they Persisted in their activities, they and itteir homes would be destroyed. The warn- 04. Was ignored with the resulting total „'pants. Iteration of all the houses and their oc- shit Makes it no better or worse that very sv.°rtlY after this latter outrage the Arabs, colthout any warning, ambushed the weekly tr°Y Permitted by the authorities to M° elup to the Hadassah Hospital, then on ci°1Int Scopus. In nearby St George's those, where my wife and I and our (then) b ree little girls were living, the din of the wattle was deafening, but we dared not in- svhsttgate until about 5 pm that afternoon, en it was all over. We then learned that
every passenger in the two coaches involved had been massacred; the dead included the then director of the hospital, Dr Yassky, and many other distinguished medical staff. What made this latter atrocity worse for us was the knowledge that the British Mandate had not ended; yet not a single policeman or soldier did anything to stop it.
I trust that I have said enough to con- vince Richard West and those who may have been tempted to share his views that things are never so simple as he seems to think.
The Venerable C. Witton-Davies Archdeacon's Lodging, Christ Church, Oxford
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