(no subject)

Surely if there's one country that should know the effect of sustained attack is usually not to intimidate or vanquish but to entrench and intensify resolve, it's Israel. No? Okay then, carry on indiscriminately wiping out civilians. That usually turns out well.

Respect where it's due, incidentally: the sheer chutzpah of Israel demanding the enforcement of UN resolutions regarding Hizbollah.

What about, though, Gaza? Right now Hamas have to be feeling a bit left behind. Two weeks ago it was all about them and their wacky, provocative hostage-taking. (Not officially them, of course. "It wovm't uff," said Prime Minister Fox at a Hen House press conference today, coughing up feathers.) Now the soldier they originally captured and his captors are probably just sat drumming their fingers and playing chess, occasionally watching al-Jazeera to see if they even rate a mention now that Hizbollah have, metaphorically and literally, stolen their thunder. Is the Israeli Air Force even bothering any more to terrorise Palestinian civilians with sonic booms in the middle of the night, or to bomb their scant power supplies? Actually, I have no idea because, as we all know, in this technologically backward age media outlets can only concentrate their paltry resources on one foreign story at a time. Still, I'm sure when Israel eventually does turn its full attention on Gaza again, it will readily begin negotiating and handing over its many Palestinian prisoners (some arrested on pretexts so spurious they virtually count as kidnappings themselves), just as it has always done when Israeli citizens and soldiers have been abducted*.

* Memo - check this. Sure it's true though.