An e-mail:

I wrote a bit of my thesis on this (and Wikipedia at a minimum confirms what follows). Irgun made an effort to minimize casualties (e.g. they delivered a warning, timed the attack for a time that would minimize casualties, set off a bomb in the street to keep passersby away, etc.) There is debate about whether the warning was taken seriously or delivered early enough. Most importantly, the King David Hotel was the headquarters of the British Army in Palestine, and their Secretariat so it was a military and government target not just a “hotel bombing”. Not that the loss of life wasn’t tragic, but it wasn’t exactly a nail bomb in a pizza place.