Two suitcases containing timed explosives were planted near the embassy's front entrance; the resulting blast injured two people and damaged the building's residential section beyond repair.

[3] Confirming fears of the expansion of Jewish terrorism beyond Mandatory Palestine, the bombing of the embassy was the first attack against British personnel by the Irgun on European soil.

[5] It became the armed wing of Revisionist Zionism in 1936, a turn related to the Arab recourse to insurrectionary violence in that year, itself a protest against British policy regarding Jewish immigration.

[10] Before he retired as MI5's wartime Director General in May 1946, David Petrie offered an assessment of the threat of Jewish terrorism in Europe and a warning: "the red light is definitely showing".

[11] The alert was confirmed by his successor Sir Percy Sillitoe in August and September, when he designated the Irgun and Lehi as the possibly planning to assassinate prominent English figures outside the Middle East.

[12] MI5 considered Mandatory Palestine a priority within the British Empire and had Defence Security Officers (DSO) stationed within the Mandate, working with local criminal investigation departments (CID) as well as MI5's sister agency the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), to collect intel on Jewish terrorist threats to Britain.

[13] MI5 were obliged to take these threats seriously: on 22 July 1946, the Irgun bombed the King David Hotel, housing British government offices, in Jerusalem, killing 91.

[13] A low intensity guerilla war was being waged in Palestine, with sabotage of communication lines and attacks on British soldiers and mandatory policemen, 99 being killed for the period 1 October through to 18 November.

[16] In September 1945, already engaged for several years in an insurgency against the British Mandatory authorities and army in Palestine, the Irgun high command dispatched a mission to Europe whose aim was to organize the flow of displaced Jewish survivors of the Holocaust to Palestine, recruit soldiers, engage in sabotage against Great Britain and coordinate activities among Zionist organizations sympathetic to the cause.

Tavin found strong support there among Italian antifascist resistance groups, and, recruiting many members of the Betar organization among the refugees, many of the latter of whom, residing in camps run by UNRRA were also eager to participate,[18] set up cells through the country, while establishing two schools to train commandos for operations at Tricase and Ladispoli.

[23] Before the war Zeev Jabotinsky's Betar movement had obtained permission from Mussolini to have militants train at a Naval College established in Civitavecchia under the auspices of the Italian fascist authorities.

No British personnel were harmed but two Italians, one a soldier[28] who happened to be passing by and the other the embassy's concierge, suffered severe wounds that left them in a critical condition.

[1] The bombing was the first terrorist operation by the Irgun against British personnel in Europe;[30] it resulted in both a setback for illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine, and a major public relations disaster for the Zionist mainstream.

[44] In November, the British media began to sensationalize the idea that Jewish terrorism was a threat to Britain itself, creating unsubstantiated accounts of other putative terrorist plots and activities.

[51] In order not to be outdone by the Irgun, the rival Lehi undertook similar operations against the Colonial Office in London, which the Scotland Yard unit investigating Jewish terrorist activities linked to the Embassy bombing,[52][53] and only desisted from a plan to release a strain of cholera bacteria into London's underground water supply system by news that the British government had decided to leave Palestine.

[54][d] According to Italian historian Furio Biagini the entire world cheered at the way such bold feats by members of the Palestinian yishuv managed to humiliate Great Britain and the recourse to terrorism by the Irgun and Lehi were complementary to the activities of the Haganah and the diplomacy of the Jewish Agency in effecting the British withdrawal from Palestine.