Spy story

The Russian Mole and the Fight for the Promised Land

Sir Gyles Isham, MI5’s top man in Palestine and head of the security service in Jerusalem, was out of town on Monday, July 22, 1946, the day one of the 20th century’s most deadly terror attacks sent a wall of flame right through his offices.

Ninety-one people were killed as a powerful bomb devastated the southern wing of the King David Hotel, which served as the de facto headquarters of the British Mandate in Palestine and should have been the most closely guarded building in the Middle East.

Radical factions of the Zionist movement, some of whom openly described themselves as terrorists, were waging a relentless underground war to drive the British out and establish an independent state of Israel.