Gaza.

This is coolbert:

An Israeli soldier is kidnapped by "militants". He is held hostage "somewhere" in Gaza.

The Israeli government decides to go and find the troop missing. To do so, they use massive force. What appears to be a brigade or so of troops. That is around 5,000 men. Using all the panoply of Israeli military might.

To include:

* Aircraft drop bombs on the power station for all of Gaza. Knocking out electric power for about six months. That is six months after the fighting stops, which it has not. [Gaza has about 1 million inhabitants. NO power is going to be a real burden for everyone!!]

* And two bridges linking Gaza and Israeli are dropped. Aircraft flying bombing missions hit each bridge, both are destroyed.

* That combat brigade deploys armored personnel carriers [APC's], tanks, artillery.

* The Hamas leadership and ruling party members are taken into detention. Over sixty of them.

* Israeli aircraft "buzzing" the summer residence of the Syrian President.

* A second round of airstrikes on Gaza.

All this for one soldier??

Does this seem excessive??

Here is what the late General Zee'vi would have said, and did say, about this sort of thing:

"Let them quake. And let them call us a mad-dog nation. Let them realize that we're a wild country, deadly and dangerous to everyone around, awful, crazy, capable of suddenly going nuts because they murdered one of our kids - - even one! . . . that if they shoot one of our ambassadors, or even a consul, or even the attache' in charge of stamp collecting, we're capable of starting, suddenly, just for the hell of it, before breakfast, World War Three."

There you have it. And this was Zee'vi saying this in 1982. A mentality is at work here. You screw with us and something really bad is going to happen to you. If you do have bad folks, you had better reign them in or you will not like the consequences.

Dig this:

"Zeevi's most significant political rival was Ehud Olmert, who is now the Prime Minister, though their mutual hatred had no connection with their views on state policy."

"Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said there will be no negotiations and called for the unconditional release of the soldier, 19-year-old Cpl. Gilad Shalit. Olmert said Israel did not intend to reoccupy Gaza but would not balk at "extreme action" to bring home Shalit, who was captured in a cross-border raid on Sunday."

Zee'vi and Olmert may have been rivals, but they shared a common outlook.

Hard mind with hard thoughts for a hard part of the world!!

coolbert.