Happily, Scowcroft offers some good news on that front. “Arab leaders are now keen to resolve the 50-year-old dispute,” Scowcroft giddily reports. “Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel may be as well.”

Note how in the realist formulation, the Arab leaders are “keen” for peace and yet Israel is seemingly and sadly a reluctant partner in the endeavor. One can see how Scowcroft has gotten this impression. The Israeli government’s bellicose rhetoric regarding wiping the Arab world from the map has indeed been jarring. Its additional refusal to recognize the right of certain Arab countries to exist has been inappropriate. And of course, Olmert’s racist rhetoric about how Muslims are the descendants of apes and pigs doesn’t create the impression that he’s at all “keen for peace.”

Wait a minute! I’ve got it wrong. The Ohlmert government has done none of those things. Israel’s Middle Eastern malefactors, however, have.

SCOWCROFT AND HIS FELLOW “REALISTS,” as always, have it completely wrong. In truth, it’s Israel who has always been on America’s side. There’s no need for Scowcroft and his acolytes to strategize on how to return Israel to the American fold. For the past fifty years, Israel has been the only outpost of peace and democracy in the Middle East. Even with the fitful progress of Iraq, Israel remains our sole reliable ally in the region.

What’s more, throughout its 57 year history, Israel has pined for peace with its neighbors. Israel has never promised the destruction of the numerous hostiles that surround her. When Israel had the chance to march into Cairo in 1973, it chose not to. Likewise in 1973, Israel passed up the chance to destroy the Egyptian Army which only days earlier had been poised and eager to destroy Israel. Today, Israel could do the kind of damage to Palestine that the Palestinians long to do (and promise to do) to Israel. And yet Israel doesn’t.

It takes a strange kind of stubbornness to survey this landscape and conclude that Israel is the greatest obstacle to peace. James Baker once allegedly said, “F**k the Jews.” While Baker has vehemently denied ever making the comment, whether or not he said it is academic. Either through animus or obtuseness, Baker, Scowcroft and the other Deans of the Realist School have determined that Israel is the root of all the problems in the Middle East.

How they arrived there isn’t worthy of debate. What is important is that as a class they remain ignored and discredited intellectual outcasts. That’s one honor that they’ve definitely earned.