Who's On First?

I'd love to relive history so I can work out if Israel is telling a huge nasty. They are arguing that Israel is defending itself after Hezbollah "invaded" Israel, killed and kidnapped soldiers and started raining Katyusha rockets down on Northern Israel.

Except, my recollection (which may be wrong) is different. There's no problem with the bit about Hezbollah killing and kidnapping, but I do wonder about the rockets. I could've sworn that Israel started that by bombing the crap out of Southern Lebanon - to which Hezbollah retaliated.

I could be wrong (perhaps it just wasn't reported that way), but it would seem that they are responding to Israel's agression. Why couldn't Israel simply send in a targetted group to rescue it's soldiers?