Before Israel was created, Zionist groups used terrorism to drive British out of Palestine and build their own state. Terrorism is just a tactic. It is not a movement or an organization. Many groups use it when they are weaker than their enemy.

Jewish terrorists from Irgun, a militant Zionist group, brought the practice of putting bombs in buses and large crowds to Palestine in late 1937. Historian Benny Morris said “the Arabs may well have learned the value of terrorist bombings from the Jews.”

Between 1944 and 1947, several Zionist organizations used terrorist attacks to push British out of Palestine. Many innocent civilians died. Zionist terrorists bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946. They also murdered UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948 because he wanted to internationalize Jerusalem.

These people were not isolated extremists. The leaders of the Bernadotte murder plot were later given amnesty by Israeli government. One of them was later elected to Knesset. Another leader who approved the murder but was not tried was Yitzhak Shamir, future Prime Minister. He openly said “neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.” He also said terrorism had “a great part to play… in our war against the occupier [Britain].” In 1998 he told interviewer “had I not acted as I did, it is doubtful that we would have been able to create an independent Jewish state of our own.”

Menachem Begin headed Irgun and later became Prime Minister. He was one of most prominent Jewish terrorists before Israeli independence. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol often called him simply “the terrorist.”

American presidents welcomed former terrorists to White House including PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir.

Source: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy