We’ve been staying in the King David Hotel, here in Jerusalem.
I’ve always wanted to do so, not so much because it’s a considered a five-star luxury hotel but because it is itself an important part of Jerusalem’s history and because it is, indisputably, the city’s most famous hotel. We’ve stayed a couple of times just down the road in the very fine David Citadel Hotel (e.g., when we accompanied a wealthy family on a private tour of Israel in 2012, and when I was asked to accompany the governor of Utah and an official state trade delegation about a year and a half ago), and we’ve been in the King David before, but we’ve never actually stayed here before. (Truth be told, for sheer comfort and large rooms I can now report that I prefer the David Citadel, which is much more modern. Of course, I’m not in a VIP suite here.)
The King David Hotel was opened in 1931 and is located on King David Street in the very center of Jerusalem, overlooking the Old City and Mount Zion. It was almost entirely financed by several wealthy Egyptian Jews. Today, it’s owned and operated by the superbly named Dan Hotels group.
It has famously lodged many visiting heads of state and other celebrities during their visits to Jerusalem. Many of their names appear in the marble of the first floor lobby and hall — including such folks as Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Marc Chagall, Prince Charles, Winston Churchill, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Richard Dreyfus, Queen Elizabeth II, Gerald Ford, King George V, Stephen Hawking, King Hussein of Jordan, Henry Kissinger, Madonna, Richard Nixon, Barack Obama, Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret Thatcher, and, yes, Donald Trump. Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia made the King David his residence when Benito Mussolini’s invasion forced him into exile in 1936. The Egyptian President Anwar Sadat stayed at the King David Hotel during his historic visit to Israel in November 1977.
The King David is also famous — or, rather, notorious — as the target of a 1946 terrorist bombing by the underground Zionist paramilitary organization Irgun. Ninety-one people died in that bombing, which was motivated by the fact that the hotel was the British administrative headquarters for Palestine under the pre-Israel British mandate. The commander of Irgun from 1943 until the founding of the State of Israel — in other words, the commander of Irgun during its bombing of the King David and during its later massacre of the Arab village of Deir Yassin — was Menachem Begin, who went on to serve as Prime Minister of Israel from June 1977 until October 1983, when he was succeeded by Yitzhak Shamir, who had been a member of Irgun until, finding it too moderate, he left to join a more radical organization that ultimately partnered with Irgun in the attack on Deir Yassin.
This sort of history is, I suspect, little known among American supporters of Israel.
Posted from Jerusalem, Israel
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