AFP, our pals in France, for this gem:
Israel gears up for Gaza blitz as US urges restraint
And get a load of this breathless text:
KEREM SHALOM, Israel — Thousands of Israeli troops were massed on the Gaza border on Tuesday poised for an offensive after the kidnapping of a teenage soldier but the United States appealed for restraint.
Palestinian armed groups insisted that they would not release the captive unless Israel frees all Palestinian women and children from its jails – conditions already ruled out by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
The 19-year-old Israeli corporal, who also holds French nationality, was snatched on Sunday in a brazen raid on an army post on the Gaza Strip border in which two other Israeli servicemen and two Palestinian fighters were killed.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Israel to give diplomacy a chance, saying that there was a “concerted international effort” underway for the release of Gilad Shalit.
She called for an effort to “calm the situation, not to let the situation escalate and give diplomacy a chance to work and try to budget this release.”
Although Israel has said that it will first exhaust diplomatic efforts to free Shalit, Palestinians have abandoned border homes fearing a large-scale assault, while militants fearing assassination have gone to ground.
Ohmigod! End of the world! Medic! Medic! Prozac, Valium, Zoloft, stat!
Here’s a fun thing to do. After every sentence (or menacing phrase, your choice), say, “Dum da DUM!” in the menacing way that kids use it to suggest danger ahead. (Mind you, they use it to mock each other, their parents, and the world, and I have cheerfully lifted their use of it and am teaching it to my fourth graders.)