Israel Was Warned Ahead of First London Blast (& Britain was too)

paulthompson

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Fri Jul-08-05 06:58 PM
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Israel Was Warned Ahead of First London Blast (& Britain was too)

This just in:

Report: Israel Was Warned Ahead of First Blast

(IsraelNN.com) Army Radio quoting unconfirmed reliable sources reported a short time ago that Scotland Yard had intelligence warnings of the attacks a short time before they occurred.

The Israeli Embassy in London was notified in advance, resulting in Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu remaining in his hotel room rather than make his way to the hotel adjacent to the site of the first explosion, a Liverpool Street train station, where he was to address an economic summit.

Israeli officials stress the advanced Scotland Yard warning does not in any way indicate Israel was the target in the series of apparent terror attacks.

http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=85346

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I've never heard of the above source, but the Associated Press is reporting much the same thing:

British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said.

Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said. ... Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy to say they had received warnings of possible attacks, the official said. He did not say whether British police made any link to the economic conference.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of his position.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050707/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_britain_explosions_1

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The Israeli government is now denying the warnings:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/597425.html

However, Antiwar.com has just pointed out a couple of hours ago that the Israeli excuse, that Israel was warned just after the first attack, also doesn't make sense, since the official story says British authorities mistakenly thought the first couple of attacks were just technical breakdowns on the subway and it wasn't until the third bombing when they realized it was terrorism.

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=2205_0_1_0_C

The private intelligence service Stratfor goes even further, and says that both Israel and Britain had warnings about the attacks days in advance:

Contrary to original claims that Israel was warned “minutes before” the first attack, unconfirmed rumors in intelligence circles indicate that the Israeli government actually warned London of the attacks “a couple of days” previous. Israel has apparently given other warnings about possible attacks that turned out to be aborted operations. The British government did not want to disrupt the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, or call off visits by foreign dignitaries to London, hoping this would be another false alarm.

The British government sat on this information for days and failed to respond. Though the Israeli government is playing along publicly, it may not stay quiet for long. This is sure to apply pressure on Blair very soon for his failure to deter this major terrorist attack.

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/stratfor-london.html

Amongst other things, this raises the possibility that Netanyahu and other attendees of the Israeli investment conference located across the street from the site of the first bombing may have been targets.

No matter how you slice it, it's hard to explain why Netanyahu was told not to leave his hotel room, even if he was only warned shortly after the bombings began, while the general public were given no such warnings.