Everyone should just ignore Ahmadinejad. He doesn’t even have the power to allow women to watch football matches in Iran. His position isn’t as powerful as Prince Charles in the United Kingdom. He doesn’t control the military or the Iranian foreign ministry, so people should just ignore him. The last official move he was able to get away with was to complain about young Iranians walking dogs. He should be viewed as similar to, but less powerful than Rush Limbaugh.

Neither should Israel be expected to forswear military force when fools like Iran’s Ahmadinejad openly advocate for Israel’s destruction.

I don’t mean to offer Jewish trauma as an excuse for being the neighborhood bully, but it is critical to understanding how Israel will react to provocation, perceived or otherwise. Using the example of the traumatized war veteran – we don’t condone a shooting rampage, but we don’t deliberately provoke it, either.

I also would say that there are a number of dynamics at play in Israel. I cannot imagine the cultural trauma they endured. However, let’s remember that there have been many other groups that have endured similar experiences while the world merely watched (Armenians, Rwandans, etc.). However, I must point that it may be helpful for traumatized countries to be approached in similar ways as traumatized individuals, support, structure, limits, and careful interventions… We don’t let Vietnam vets go on shooting rampants when they have flashbacks and merely state, “They’ve been through a lot.” I don’t see why we should allow countries to do just that.

If Israel had gone to Egypt to act as an intermediate, Egypt would have gotten a much needed boost in the Islamic world by demonstrating a benefit to dealing with Israel, and Israel would have been downgraded as the “great Satan” by being reasonable.

Hezbollah would have lost prestige by causing needless trouble. You have to remember that Hezbollah is Shi’ia and not trusted by the Sunni governments with Shi’ia minorities.

Now Hezbollah is being sold as a supporter of the Palestinian cause, which is not really true in the politics of Lebabon.

As for prisoners, not everyone in Israeli jails is political, they have plenty of common criminals to release and pad the figures.

But they didn’t; Olmert seems to be rather anxious to establish his “Yee Haw” credentials and has put the inmates in charge of the asylum. It’s distressingly familiar.

The prisoner exchange ratio is pretty heavily weighted away from Israel. Should prisoners be released back into the general population? That’s a judgement I hesitate to make, as I don’t live surrounded by people sworn to kill me. If I did, I suspect I’d be pretty quick to pull the trigger, too.

Israel has plenty to answer for; what country doesn’t? And yes, some of it is pretty unforgiveable. But you have to view Israel’s actions against two dynamics – living in a rough neighborhood, and that collective survival trauma. I just don’t belong to the “Everything Israel does is evil” crowd.

The part people miss about these exchanges is that those released are banned from Israel and the occupied territories. By doing this in these exchanges they do something that the Israeli Supreme Court won’t permit, deportation without a hearing. The US isn’t the only government that doesn’t like checks and balances.

The real point is that negotiations on a prisoner exchange should have been initiated through Egypt or Jordan before everyone started blowing things up. There is always time to blow things up, but there is no way to reverse the process.

Baloney. Since when did Hezbollah or Hamas trade so many Israeli prisoners/kidnap victims for so few in return? The ratio is always tremendously higher. it’s quite true Nasrallah has said there could be an exchange, but he declined to say how many. Past experience doesn’t point to as little as three.

If you have never seen the movie Chinatown, it eventually gets around to exposing the issue.