Apparently not, based upon comments by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair the other day.

According to this article in the Jerusalem Post, spending some time in Israel has opened his eyes to some things he didn’t know when he was PM. Things that make him more sympathetic to Israel’s situation.

As Tom Gross over at NRO’s Media Blog noted:

Now that the new Mideast peace envoy Tony Blair has spent a bit of time in Israel and the Palestinian-run areas since he stepped down as British Prime Minister last summer, he says he has gained a better understanding of the threat Israel is under.

“For people on the outside it is hard to understand the problems that the [Israelis] are having. Today I understand more than when I was the prime minister the difficulties here,” he said yesterday in Jerusalem. (For starters, Blair doesn’t have to rely anymore on the lies about Israel by the BBC and British newspapers, but can see the situation for himself.)

Yesterday alone the supposedly cash-strapped Palestinians fired 37 missiles on the southern Israeli working class town of Sderot – a record number for a single day. Five Israeli civilians were injured.

Given the massive anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian bias of the British news media, particularly the BBC, it’s to be expected that the average British citizen is in the dark about the reality of the situation there. But I had assumed (or at least hoped) that the guy who been the leader of one of the most powerful and influential nations on earth might have had a little more of a clue. After all, the average evangelical Christian on the Texas street has known for years what the former PM just discovered.

It’s not like you actually have to hang out there for several months to get the picture—though that is what it took for Blair. So one wonders: what else are world leaders in the dark about that the rest of us here in fly-over country know?