Hizbollah's kidnap goals different from Hamas

This morning's attack by Hizbollah against Israel had primarily different aims than Hamas' kidnap of Gilad Shalit.

Hamas fully expected Israel to negotiate for Shalit's release and to get Israel to free prisoners. They were surprised at the scope of the Israeli response.

Hizbollah, on the other hand, clearly sees that Israel did not capitulate (yet) to the Hamas kidnapping. So why did they choose now to perform this (clearly well-planned) attack?

The idea of a "prisoner swap" (more likely a swap of Jewish bodies for live terrorists) is only tertiary in the mind of Hizbollah's leaders. The major goals are:

• Embarrass the Jews.
• Make Hizbollah look macho

There's that Arab pride again. Here's the Hizbollah supporters' reaction to the kidnapping:

They are not celebrating the idea of a prisoner swap. They are celebrating a "victory", even one where far more Arabs will end up dead than Israelis. As Hizbollah continues to be under international pressure to disarm - which is the same as asking them to stop breathing - they needed the psychological boost that comes, in the sick Arab mind, from killing and terrorizing Jews.

Since th Arabs do not have a prayer at this time to win an open confrontation with Israel they change the definition of "victory" to be any single successful attack against any single Israeli soldier.

We have a people pitifully low in self-esteem, suffering from a mass delusion where death is better than life and where pride is the major driving factor behind all activities (from honor killings to terror bombings.)