Democratic ranks panicked because publication coincided with mid-term Congressional elections. Eighty-five percent of the Jewish vote usually goes to Democrats. Even-handedness between Palestinians and Israelis is automatically dismissed as either anti-Israeli or pro-Palestinian.

Little realized in the United States is how Carter's words about Israel pale into insignificance compared to what is said and published in the Jewish state about its occupation policies and treatment of Palestinians.

Ynetnews.com, or Yedioth Ahronoth online, one of Israel's main sources for electronic news, under the headline "Like The Worst Nations," ran a piece by author Yoram Kanyuk, 79, an intellectual hardliner and former liberal. "Israeli action in the territories corrupt the Zionist dream, and is no better than apartheid," he wrote Christmas day.

"I haven't been a leftist for years," said Kanyuk, "because I don't believe the Arabs would agree to share this country with us, and I believe in the Jews' right to a home and a state in our historic homeland. Yet what we've been doing in the Territories borders on the criminal."

"When President Carter, who was never a friend of Israel, writes that what we are doing in the Territories is similar to Apartheid, everyone cries out in protest. Yet he wasn't far off from reality: our behavior is worse than that prevalent in South Africa at the time. It's unpleasant to say this, but this is the way it is."

"The killing. The hatred. The beatings. The humiliations. What will all this bring? Will we have fewer Qassam rocket attacks? Will there be no more rocket attacks if an elderly woman cannot reach the hospital? ... I'm ashamed of a country I helped create (because) we've become a violent, heartless society. We've killed at crosswalks because no car driven by an Israeli would allow someone limping with a walking stick to cross the road. What happened to us?

"Our intelligent young people are leaving the country. For most of them the reality they see is a harsh one. Those who remain here are violent and indifferent, yet we, who do not wish to renounce the Zionist dream, see how with every passing day it becomes more wicked and cruel."

In recent weeks, the Bush-Hamilton Iraq Study Group's wisemen report, as well as Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to both presidents Ford and Bush 41, in a widely published op-ed, have emphasized the imperative necessity of a Palestinian-Israeli peace deal as a sine qua non to restoring America's credibility in the Middle East. Absent such a settlement, the United States is seen throughout the region as an adjunct of Israel, not vice versa. To a man, moderate Arab leaders believe it was Israel under Ariel Sharon's administration, and Israel's neocon friends in Washington, that steered the Bush administration to invade Iraq. Perception is reality in the Middle East.

"A vigorously renewed effort to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict could fundamentally change both the dynamics in the region and the strategic calculus of key leaders," wrote Scowcroft. He believes real progress would push Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas into a defensive posture while allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states would be "liberated to assist in stabilizing Iraq."

It will require tough diplomatic love. In March 2002, at an Arab summit meeting in Beirut, then Saudi Crown Prince and now King Abdullah proposed full recognition of Israel -- to include normal diplomatic and economic relations -- in return for the 1967 Green line border. All 22 Arab nations agreed to the proposal, including Saddam Hussein's Iraq, but nary a word either from Israel or the Bush administration.

Clearly a return to pre-Six Day 1967 War frontiers was unacceptable to Israel. But the prospect of a peace treaty with 22 Arab countries would have to include Israeli territorial concessions in the occupied territories. So Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush decided to ignore the offer.

Instead, a month after the invasion of Iraq, President Bush came up with a road map for a two-state solution on a road that was no longer on the map and with a timetable for a Palestinian state by the end of 2005 that could not have been met even if the two parties had been willing. Since then, Hezbollah, which fought the Israel Defense Forces to a standstill in Lebanon, and Hamas, dedicated to the dismantling of the Jewish state, have changed the geopolitical calculus.

Washington's coercive utopians advocate a Middle Eastern settlement as a prelude to a peaceful exit from Iraq. They appear a tad detached from the realities on the ground.

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