instructed Israeli officials not to give interviews

* jerusalem post:

"In the aftermath of the attacks, The Prime Minister's Office instructed Israeli officials not to give interviews to the foreign media.
On Thursday, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and Finance Minister Binyamin Netanhayu conveyed similar messages, but only to the Hebrew-language media.

In the international arena this time the message was the following: "It's not a story with anything to do with Israel. It's a story of international terrorism in Britain and therefore we should be quiet," according to a government source.

The source indicated that part of the reason for such circumspection stemmed from the high level of "speculation" concerning the attacks. He specifically referred to a report that came out soon after Thursday's bombings that Israel had received advance warning of the attacks, pointing to the "danger that this kind of report can bring to Israel."

What one source did note, however, was that Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu received a call from British police soon after the first explosion, but before the full extent of the attacks was known, because it had occurred by the site of a conference at which he was to speak and for which he was about to depart. After the call from the police to his security staff, Netanyahu stayed put."

thats some pretty good service. there are reports of 7 bombs going off and the british *police* think 'gee - one of those is near where bibi is gonna give a speech. we should call him'. does that even make sense?

note, it wasnt that there were bombs going off and he was told to stay put till further notice, which might be some standard procedure. nope, he was called immediately because some genius realised that the bomb was near the convention center 'for which he was about to depart'.

and, of course there was no such thing as a 'first explosion' - and the explosions were largely believed to be power problems for the longest time.

and, ftr, the report "that Israel had received advance warning" came from an israeli official to the AP - not some silly internets conspiracy types.

(ftr, the jpost story was updated 20 hours after it was originally posted, although it doesnt give any detail as to what the changes were.)

do i think bibi was told in advance? i dunno. does the story smell a bit? yeah, maybe.