Acting crazy

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway quotes an Autralian newspaper's report that "Israel threatened to assassinate Palestinian Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh if Hamas militants did not release a captured Israeli soldier unharmed.", and calls it "stupid beyond belief".

I’m afraid that this (the report) is a canard, but boy, do I wish it were true! It is high time for Israel (and for the US for that matter), to start behaving a bit more irresponsibly, if not outright crazy in this war. World’s sympathy? Screw it! It ended for us soon after it became clear after 9/11 that the US would not roll over and die, but intends to punch back. Oh, the outrage! The condemnations! Israel should borrow a page from the playbook by that nutcase, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, and start talking about wiping Palestine off the map, or nuking Tehran. Apparently, he gets results, with the Europeans offering a “package of incentives” so that Iran does not build The Bomb. How about a nice package of incentives from the Arab countries for not hanging a big mushroom cloud over Mecca?
You can’t get the attention of fanatical killers by playing nice. They’ve been chopping people’s heads in front of video cameras, and the world gets upset because American soldiers - the savages! - photographed naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and play-acted electrocution. If the world is going to hate the Jews and the Americans anyway, why not at least give them good reasons?