Do you believe that former President Carter’s appeal for a paradigm shift in the way the United States is relating to Israel will succeed?

No. In Congress his views carry no weight, and particularly in the media, they have not had any major impact. They reflect a lot of what some American academics think—the hard left among American academics has always taken Carter’s view seriously. When you put it together with Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, Tony Judd, and Noam Chomsky, Carter has helped to legitimize these extremist views. To me what is so ironic is that Chomsky’s views, like many of the hard left views against Israel, are more anti-American in their opinions than they are anti-Israel. For President Carter to be associated with those views is tragic.

In what way, if any, can the results of the 2008 US presidential elections affect the United States’ relationship with Israel, producing stronger or weaker ties between the two countries?

I do not see the 2008 election as having a significant impact on the US-Israel relationship. Every candidate running for office basically supports Israel, supports Israel’s right to defend itself, and supports the US-Israel alliance. There is no credible candidate today on either side who does not support the mainstream approach to US-Israel relations. The only candidate in recent years who has ever strongly opposed Israel has been Ralph Nader, and he is getting decreasing numbers of votes, although he has previously had a big effect on the outcome. If Nader had not run in 2000, I do not believe we would be at war with Iraq today.

Looking ahead to 20 years from now, where do you see Israel in terms of the peace process and in terms of its relations with current allies or enemies? Are you optimistic about Israel's future and about the future of the Middle East in general?

It is impossible to predict 20 years hence what the Middle East will look like. Nobody knows whether there will be a Saudi Arabia, whether that wholly-owned family gas station will remain a country or will be overrun. It is impossible to know if the Hashemite Kingdom will survive or whether Egypt will be able to control its Islamic radicalism. So the question is not so much the survival of Israel—it is the survival of moderate Arab regimes or anything that resembles moderate Arab regimes in the Middle East. The great threat is an Islamic revolution that would overthrow moderate regimes. Only by military force can Israel survive a completely Islamic and radical surrounding neighborhood. I can’t say I’m optimistic. Specifically, I am not optimistic about the way in which the world has been dealing with Islamic extremism. We have been pandering and paternalistic, and I think we have been afraid to tell the truth about the danger of it. There is a movement to try to convert the world into the most extreme form of Islamic extremism, which relegates women to second-class citizens, non-Muslims to second-class citizens, and turns us back to the twelfth century. We must resist that, for the sake of moderate Muslims and for the sake of peace.