The British say they never received a warning. It’s quite possible. Did the Irgun really expect that in half an hour a message relayed second hand through the Palestine Post and the French consulate (that is, assuming the Irgun were telling the truth, and I know I would rather trust the British), that would have been enough time to evacuate the building?
I don’t trust the British. For good cause.
You leave out that THREE calls were made. One to the British. I believe the fact that even you acknowledge that even outside actors, including the French, received the warning is proof that a warning was issued.
Begin knew that also Jews would die if the building was not evacuated. If you knew anything at all, anything, about Begin, you would know that he would have not have done this if he believed one Jew would be harmed.
He believed the British would heed the warning, but the British contempt for the Jews, and the British hubris that those lowly Jews wouldn’t dare bomb British HQ, resulted in their ignoring the warnings.
See: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/King_David.html
The King David Hotel was the site of the British military command and the British Criminal Investigation Division. The Irgun chose it as a target after British troops invaded the Jewish Agency June 29, 1946, and confiscated large quantities of documents. At about the same time, more than 2,500 Jews from all over Palestine were placed under arrest. The information about Jewish Agency operations, including intelligence activities in Arab countries, was taken to the King David Hotel.
A week later, news of a massacre of 40 Jews in a pogrom in Poland reminded the Jews of Palestine how Britain’s restrictive immigration policy had condemned thousands to death.
Irgun leader Menachem Begin stressed his desire to avoid civilian casualties and said three telephone calls were placed, one to the hotel, another to the French Consulate, and a third to the Palestine Post, warning that explosives in the King David Hotel would soon be detonated.
On July 22, 1946, the calls were made. The call into the hotel was apparently received and ignored. Begin quotes one British official who supposedly refused to evacuate the building, saying: “We don’t take orders from the Jews.”1 As a result, when the bombs exploded, the casualty toll was high: a total of 91 killed and 45 injured. Among the casualties were 15 Jews. Few people in the hotel proper were injured by the blast.2
For decades the British denied they had been warned. In 1979, however, a member of the British Parliament introduced evidence that the Irgun had indeed issued the warning. He offered the testimony of a British officer who heard other officers in the King David Hotel bar joking about a Zionist threat to the headquarters. The officer who overheard the conversation immediately left the hotel and survived.4