Violent vs. Necessary

Today, we went to an old, no longer in use prison in Jerusalem, and walked around while learning about the movement for Israel's independence.  We learned about the four different military groups during the movement for independence, the Palmach, the Hagana, the Lechi, and the Etzel.  Each group had a different strategy.  The Palmach were the strike force in case of a Nazi invasion, the Hagana used self-defense, the Etzel was a mix of self-defense and attacking, and the Lechi was a somewhat extreme group who used the "whatever it takes" approach.  While there were many disagreements between the groups, one major one was when the Etzel decided to blow up the King David Hotel, killing 91 British soldiers.  What is notable about this is that the British left one year after, and most likely, this event was one of the reasons.  An ongoing debate is if this was the right method of resistance.  In my opinion, it was the necessary thing to do at that point.  We had been asking the British to leave for years, but our requests fell on deaf ears.
While some, like me, see this as a necessary action, others, such as David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, see this as unnecessary and too violent.  They might say that killing would just make the British control us more, or make them angrier thany  before.  While these are both valid points, we had been under British control for far too long, and they even restricted immigration during the time of the Nuremberg Laws.  This effectively prevented a multitude of Jews from escaping the Holocaust and potentially survive past World War 2.  At this point, we could no longer let the British stay in control of Israel.  It did not seem like other methods were effective enough, and so this was a necessary action to take.  Though it was violent, it was needed.