The British papers are having a field day with this one: The IAF threatened to shoot down Tony Blair’s jet Wednesday.

Two Israeli fighter aircraft threatened to shoot down a private jet transporting Tony Blair after coming under the misapprehension that the aircraft was staging a potential terrorist attack.

Blair, who has served for 11 months as the Middle East “quartet” envoy, was en route to Israel from a World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting at Sharm el Sheikh, in Egypt, on Wednesday morning when the warplanes were scrambled to intercept the jet, according to a report in the Times.

It is understood air traffic controllers noticed what they thought was a suspicious aircraft heading into Israeli airspace from the Sinai peninsula and tried to make contact.

Receiving no response, Israel sent out two fighters which flew above the civilian aircraft to indicate to the pilot he was being considered a suspect target.

It was only after the warplanes were positioned in attack mode that the aircraft’s crew made contact, informing air traffic control that Blair was on the flight.

Look, we know he’s really not the most pro-Israel of people, and he’s interfering trying to help negotiate some kind of deal between Israel and the PA, but he’s not that bad. No need to shoot his plane out of the sky.

Heh.

Once again, Palestinians are the cause of the crossings into Gaza closing. Once again, the UN is telling Israel that even though Palestinians are trying to kill soldiers and civilians via terror attacks from the crossings, Israel should not close them. Unbelievable.

A potentially disastrous terror attack at the Erez Crossing into the Gaza Strip was averted on Thursday when a Palestinian suicide bomber driving a truck loaded with four tons of explosives tried ramming his way into Israel, killing himself but causing no other casualties.

Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack on Erez, which is the main crossing point for international aid workers and Palestinians traveling to Israel for medical treatment.

The explosion created a huge ditch in the ground and caused serious damage to the surrounding buildings, forcing the IDF to shut down the crossing. As a result, 31 Palestinians who had permits to enter Israel for medical treatment had to return home.

The attack also caused power outages throughout northern Gaza, in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalya. Officials said that Erez would remain closed for several days until the damage was repaired.

So, let’s recap: Palestinians seeking medical treatment could not get it because of the terror attack. Power was cut because of the terror attack. And the crossing was closed because four tons of explosives damaged it heavily enough that it will take days to fix. And what does the UN representative have to say?

John Ging, the Gaza director of the UN organization in charge of Palestinian refugees, urged Israel not to let attacks like the one on Erez halt the flow of goods into Gaza. “If you hand the agenda over to the extremists, then they are very happy about it. If it only takes one rocket to derail everything, then that’s massive power,” Ging said.

Really? I would say that four tons of explosives, followed by heavily-armed terrorists in jeeps ready to kill and kidnap more Israeli soldiers, is pretty massive power. But hey, I have a brain in my head that’s untainted by whatever you need to have in order to work for the UN.

And here’s the best part of it all: The terrorists say they attacked Israel in order to force Israel to agree to the truce. You know, from the “Take the truce terms or we’ll kill you” school of negotiations.

Abu Ahmad, the Islamic Jihad spokesman, linked the attack to the failed ceasefire talks and said the bombing was meant to “send a message” to Israel that if it did not accept a truce “Gaza is not going to be a place where you will enjoy stability.”

Yeah. That’s the way to get a truce accepted.

When reading about the Israeli-Syrian negotiations it’s easy to dismiss them on account of Olmert’s legal trouble or because it isn’t even clear that Israel stands to gain anything from ceding the Golan to Syria. It’s also reasonably clear that Syria’s positions cannot be reconciled with Israel’s.

Even the past has shown that every once in a while (even with Assad Sr.) news would leak out about a “Syrian track” and then fade to nothing.

Asad’s goal, then, is not peace but a peace process. He participates in negotiations without intending that they reach fruition. Engaging in apparently serious talks wins him improved relations with the West without having to open up his country. He can wink at us while maintaining his ties to Iran and hosting a wide range of terrorist groups. He offers the occasional flourish (such as his call last week to Mr. Clinton as the latter was eating lunch with Shimon Peres) but does not change the substance.

Of course today, the negotiation, unlike what Pipes is describing seem to be intended for Israel, not the United States. Or perhaps to drive a wedge between the two countries.

So despite the record and Olmert’s political weakness, which convince some that nothing will come of these talks, Ethan Bronner of the NYT, thinks that there might be more going on.

A senior government official, who said he could not speak for attribution on such a politically delicate topic, agreed in part. He said that what Mr. Olmert was doing with the Palestinians “is much less than meets the eye.” Nonetheless, he, like others, contended that the new Syrian talks could prove significant.“This seems bigger than any one individual,” he said. “Olmert is, in a way, committing his successors who, by the way, may be coming in soon. I don’t think he will be the one to complete this. His motives may be suspicious. But something has happened here that will probably go beyond this prime minister.”

The idea that a lame duck could obligate his successor in a deal that he’s making in secret is one that’s very frightening.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Just as I told you: Syria doesn’t want peace. Syria wants the Golan. And that’s about it.

Syria said on Thursday it had received guarantees from Israel via Turkey for a full withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights and rejected conditions put by the Jewish state for concluding a peace deal.

Israel and Syria on Wednesday announced that they had begun indirect talks in Turkey, the first of their kind in eight years. But Israeli officials on Thursday said Damascus must distance itself from Iran and stop supporting Palestinian and Lebanese militants.

“We received commitments and messages from the Israeli government and the Israeli prime minister that guarantee, via the Turks, that he knows what the Syrians want,” Syrian Information Minister Muhsin Bilal told al-Jazeera television.

“He knows that the whole of the Golan Heights will be returned to Syria and that Israel will withdraw to the lines of June 4, 1967.”

Shyeah. Right. They’re called the 1949 Armistice Lines, and that ain’t happening. Because Syria refuses to give up on trying to destroy Israel by proxy (since they’ve failed every time they’ve tried themselves).

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, echoing US comments, said Syria should distance itself from groups such as Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, some of whose leaders it hosts, as well as Lebanon’s Hizbullah terror group.

“When they make these demands, they are setting conditions and the issue of peace, the peace process does not require prior conditions,” Bilal said.

And get this:

“These conditions have already been rejected as is the phrase ‘painful concessions’ since what the Syrians are demanding is their right.”

Bilal said there was no painful concession involved in Israel returning land that belongs to Syria anyway.

Not anymore it doesn’t. And it may never again. That’s what happens when you use the land to bombard civilians.

So my post yesterday appears to have pissed off the neo-Nazis so much, that they copied me on a sock-puppet email conversation about some Jew converting to Christianity. I expect they wanted me to join in, or be hurt, or curl up and cry over the fact that someone converted from Judaism to another religion. Gee, like that never happened before.

Maybe they thought I’d get mad or something. Nah. I think I’ll just back up yesterday’s post with numbers. 155 Jewish Nobel prize winners since the prize began. Let’s see, 49 in biomedical science, 23 in economics, 27 in chemistry, 44 in physics, 12 in literature.

And gee, there are basically no Jews giving out the prizes, so there goes that conspiracy theory. 155 prizes out of a total of 797. Gee, what’s that percentage? Carry the one, subtract the—wow, that’s nearly twenty percent given to the Jews.

So, how many Nobel prizes have British neo-Nazis won over the years?

None. That’s right. A great big goose egg.

Have a nice day, boys. Try not to let those penises get any smaller.