Gunboat diplomacy

Without making any comment about the rights and wrongs of the Palestinian issue, I can’t help admiring Israel’s robust approach to the defence of its citizens, particularly where those citizens are involved in the service of the State. It sends a clear message out to other countries — “if you kidnap our people, we will send in the gunboats”. Damn right. We used to do that sort of thing in Britain, but if you come under attack by Johnny Foreigner these days, it seomtimes seems like the strategy of the Foreign Office is more likely to be to seek to minimise the links between you and the UK or even worse, side with Johnny Foreigner and work very hard to nail you on your return to Britain as well, should you ever be able to do so. If it had been British troops, Hamas wouldn’t even have needed to mount the daring kidnapping raid. They could have just banged in an extradition warrent.