Israelis 'warned of 7/7 bombings'

Private Eye 1137
22 July 2005

ANOTHER rumour which has circulated widely is that Israeli finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu received prior warning of the bombs via the Israeli embassy and therefore declined to attend a conference in London that day.

This was based partly on an erroneous report from an "official at the embassy" which appeared on the Associated Press wire service, and partly on the determination of anti-semites to believe, just as they did with an equal lack of evidence after the 9/11 attacks in New York, that Jews were warned to vacate the area prior to an attack set up by Zionists keen to demonise Muslims.

This theory is rather hard to square with the fact that the meeting Netanyahu was scheduled to attend was the Israeli Opportunity 2005 conference organised jointly by the Israeli Embassy and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, and it was taking place at the Great Eastern Hotel almost directly above the bomb which exploded near Liverpool Street station, which meant that there was actually a significantly higher number of Jews than usual in the area when the bomb exploded.

Netanyahu, however, was not there - as the conference's schedule shows, he was not due to deliver his speech until 9.30, which meant that he had just left his own hotel to make his way to the Great Eastern when he received news of the explosion at Liverpool Street, at about the same time as everyone else, 9.15, when TV and radio stations began reporting it.

Unsurprisingly, his security guards decided to turn back. The unnamed official had simply muddled his times in the confusion (much as everyone else did: the police did not even realise the underground blasts had been simultaneous until the following day), and AP duly withdrew the claim - not that this stopped the Daily Express and Mail on Sunday from reporting it over the weekend, the latter under the spectacularly misleading headline '"No Alert' claim is thrown into doubt".