On October 19, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrived at the King David Hotel in West Jerusalem, Israel to meet Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Forty-three years old and the UK’s first Indian-origin prime minister, Sunak has now completed one year at 10, Downing Street.
The portal Information Liberation reported on Sunak’s visit with the headline, ‘Beyond parody: Israel mocks UK Prime Minister by Hosting him at King David Hotel’. It is interesting to analyse how Sunak was perhaps oblivious to the history of King David Hotel, but yet he retained the façade of British hypocrisy that has caused massive backlash in the region.
It is important to understand three different contexts within this hypocrisy. Firstly, why is Sunak’s speech from King David Hotel important? Secondly, why has the world forgotten Irgun – the militant Israeli Zionist terror group? Lastly, what are Sunak’s ties with Israel, and what compels him to speak against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel?
Let us go back in history a bit.
On July 22, 1946, the same King David Hotel, which was then the British Headquarters of ‘Mandate Palestine’ as well as British Criminal Investigation Division (CID), was attacked by Irgun forces – an Israeli Zionist paramilitary organisation. The attack at King David Hotel led to a high casualty toll: a total of 91 killed and 45 injured.
While addressing the House of Commons, then British Prime Minister Clement Attlee called it ‘an insane act of terrorism’. Daniel Lipson, who was the Jewish member of the opposition Conservative party, also declared that Irgun’s bomb attack on King David Hotel was “a dishonour and shame to the name of Jew”. The Earl of Winterton described Irgun as “vile and treacherous as foe as Nazis”. Einstein, who refused to be the president of Israel, had called Irgun “Nazi and Fascist parties” and described it as a “terrorist, right wing, chauvinist organization” in a letter to the New York Times in 1948. Other significant Jewish figures like Hannah Arendt, Jessurun Cardozo and Sidney Hook had called Irgun as “a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organisation in Palestine”.
But why was King David Hotel so important, one might ask?
Built in 1929, King David Hotel was meant to be a luxurious escapade in the pyretic Palestinian environment, with Swiss interior designing, La regence – the basement nightclub and Grand Lobby for tea for visiting dignitaries, potentates and well-heeled. No doubt, it attracted a lot of politicians, diplomats, journalist and even spies. Even though the hotel was surrounded by armored cars, roadblocks, checkpoints and barbed wires and machine gun-pit, it remained open to the public. In the words of American historian Thurston Clarke (author of By Blood and Fire: Attack on the King David Hotel), “the King David was built and operated in a time-honoured Middle Eastern fashion. Azra Mosseri, a Jewish-Egyptian banker, had purchased a four-and-a-half-acre lot in Jerusalem from a Greek Orthodox monastery. To finance construction, he sold shares in Palestine Hotels Ltd. to American and Egyptian Jews, and to Swiss investors, retaining for his family a controlling interest. A Swiss architect designed the hotel, a Jewish architect supervised its construction, and Arab workmen built it. The company hired Swiss and Jews to manage it, French and Italians to cook, and local Arabs and Africans from the Sudan to wait on tables, clean rooms, mop floors and wash dishes.”
Menachem Begin, the sixth prime minister of Israel – also a profound ideological mentor of current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – was the leader of Irgun. Begin was described by the British government as the “leader of the notorious terrorist organisation”. In 1946, a month before the bombing, the British Military Organisation had seized highly sensitive documents which could implicate Haganah (a Zionist military organisation representing the majority of the Jews in Palestine from 1920 to 1948). Therefore, Begin believed that these intelligence files were located in King David Hotel and ‘hoped that the Irgun’s bombs would destroy the incriminating material’. Later, to the surprise of Begin, Haganah backtracked and broadcast a statement over its clandestine radio station Kol Israel on July 23. It denounced the “heavy loss of life caused by the dissidents’ operation at the King David Hotel”.
Later, in his memoir The Revolt: Story of The Irgun (1951), Begin asked, “Why was the King David Hotel not evacuated?” He claimed, “there are certain facts which are beyond all doubt”: first, that the Irgun’s warnings were inexplicably ignored; and, second, that the hotel’s evacuation was specifically prevented. “[T]here is reason to believe,” the Irgun leader continues, “that a specific order was given, by someone in authority, that the warning to leave the hotel should be ignored. Why was this stupid order given? Who was responsible for it?” Although Begin provides no answers, his version of events – as the controversy over the wording of the anniversary plaque evidences – has assumed almost totemic importance in the mythology of both the Irgun’s struggle and the history of pre-state Israel, as stated by Professor Bruce Hoffman, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. Nevertheless, Irgun members were later absorbed in the Israeli Defence Forces. It was the predecessor of Israel’s right-wing Herut (or “Freedom”) party, which is today known as Likud Party, as stated by Israeli sociologist Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt.
The irony of this decades-old conspiracy does not lose its merit when current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had openly stated, “Imagine that Hamas or Hezbollah would call the military headquarters in Tel Aviv and say, ‘We have placed a bomb and we are asking you to evacuate the area,” in 2006, as quoted by Parker and Farrell in “British anger at terror celebration.” The same nonchalance of 2006 was followed by the Israeli military in October 2023, when an Egyptian intelligence officer stated, “We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings.” Later, Michael McCaul, the chair of the US House foreign affairs committee, spoke after an intelligence briefing to senior members of Congress, and said it was not clear at what level the warning was given.
Returning to Rishi Sunak’s visit to Israel and stay at King David Hotel, the hypocrisy now unfolds. Sunak spoke from the same hotel this time, but against Palestinian terror. Any mention of Irgun’s terrorism has been replaced with ‘jihadist’ terrorism and Islamophobia. Why did Sunak forget what Zionist terrorism had done to the British in Palestine?
With his international reputation in tatters, Sunak continues to employ the same hyperbole of British hypocrisy. He also tweeted his support for Israel, stating, ‘To have a child taken from you is a parent’s worst nightmare.’ He remains mum on the child death toll in Gaza that has reached 2,000. Photo-ops and hand-shaking with Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad Bin Salman, Egyptian President Sisi and Palestinian President Abbas were meant for the optics of a symbolic visit. On October 23, he stated, ‘On the basis of the deep knowledge of our intelligence and weapons experts, the British government judges that the explosion at the al-Ahli Arab hospital was likely caused by a missile – or part of one – that was launched from within Gaza towards Israel.’ As usual, the deep knowledge of intelligence wasn’t shared. But in reality, why did Sunak not call for a ceasefire but instead of ‘specific pauses’ in the Israel-Hamas conflict? “How much worse does the situation [in Gaza] need to get before he will join us in calls for a humanitarian ceasefire?” SNP MP Mhairi Black had asked the PM. “I cannot understand the PM’s position, or Keir Starmer’s unwillingness to call on all parties to commit to an immediate ceasefire. How many more children have to die?” said Humza Yousaf, a Scottish politician who has served as First Minister of Scotland.
Perhaps, the second part of Sunak’s hypocrisy is also meddled with personal ties. Firstly, Sunak’s wife Akshata Murthy had avoided £20 million in UK tax due to her status as a non-domiciled citizen. Moreover, she earned Rs 68.17 crore in dividend income from her shareholding in India’s second-largest IT firm Infosys. Secondly, N. R. Narayana Murty, the Infosys founder and father-in-law of Sunak – supplies technology to Israel that helps the country in active surveillance of Palestinians. Infosys had also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the State of Israel in 2012, to establish and enhance cooperation. In 2015, Infosys bought Israel’s Panaya – a firm that provides automation technology for large scale enterprise software management – for $230m. In 2016, Infosys invested $4 million in Israeli firm Cloudyn – cloud computing startup.
In April 2020, Israeli serial entrepreneur Uri Levine was appointed as independent director for a period of three years. Levine is a former Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate’s elite Unit 8200 solider. Unit 8200 is the largest unit of the directorate and the principal information gathering unit where soldiers develop tools, analyse, process and share the intelligence with the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). Looking at Sunak’s family ties with Israel, it can be contextualised why he strongly opposes the anti- BDS policies with legislation. In 2022, at a Conservative Friends of Israel event in August, Sunak declared Jerusalem is “indisputably the historic capital” of Israel and that there was a “very strong case” for moving the UK embassy from its current location in Tel Aviv.
It is understandable that maintaining a moral compass has not been the priority of the British – the erstwhile empire that has caused several conflicts. Even Sunak is answerable to radical members of his own party, the families of British hostages taken by Hamas as well as the British news media. But no amount of critique by Jeremy Corbyn, erstwhile leader of the Labour Party, can instil humanitarian values in a real-politik world. Look what happened to David Mellor in 1988. The then Foreign Office minister Mellor had visited Palestinian refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. He had labelled conditions there “an affront to civilised values.” He later criticised Israeli government policy in the area and chastised an Israeli army colonel for the arrest of a 14-year-old boy outside the camp during his visit. Today, he is no longer ‘trusted’ or a ‘politician’. But if ‘unelected’ Sunak continues the mirage of diplomacy, he would definitely hurt the Muslim diaspora in the UK, which is four million in England and Wales. He needs to call for an immediate ceasefire and not ‘specific pauses,’ else the consequences can be disastrous.
Dr. Shubhda Chaudhary is a West Asia political analyst and editor at the Centre for India West Asia Dialogue.
