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The wish for peace on Earth easily leads to wishful thinking. But wishful thinking does not bring peace.

The never-ending anti-Zionist attacks on Israel have produced more than their fair share of deluded hope. The only real path to peace between Israel and its neighbours is a two- state solution, acceptance of the existence of Israel and creation of a separate Palestinian state beside Israel. But it is a solution that anti-Zionists constantly spurn. They want the destruction of Israel and its absorption into a larger Arab Muslim state, what is euphemistically called the one-state solution.

Anti-Zionists promote their cause by propagating phony charges against Israel to discredit and delegitimize the Jewish state. Wishful thinkers ignore the anti-Semitism at the core of anti-Zionist criticism and fantasize that, if only Israel avoided this or that behaviour that anti-Zionists decry, the two-state solution would be at hand.

This fantasy world has many imaginary constructions. One of these is that Palestinians who support anti-Zionists do not want to destroy Israel. Mary Corkery of KAIROS and Etienne De Jonghe of Pax Christi International asserted this remarkable proposition in a letter to the editor published in The Globe and Mail on Dec. 22. They wrote that Palestinians who voted for the anti-Zionist terrorist organization Hamas in last January's Palestinian election "did not vote to destroy Israel, nor do they want this." The authors do not explain how they know that Palestinians wanted something different from the platform of the party for which they voted.

But even if they were right, what practical difference should it make? Hamas now forms the government of the Palestinian Authority. Presumably, at least some — and one would hope many — of the Germans who voted for the Nazis in 1933 did not vote for Auschwitz. Canada's reaction to the Palestinian Authority has to be based on the policies of its government, not on wishful thinking about what Canada would rather those policies be.

A second fantasy is that Israel is an apartheid state and that peace would be at hand if only Israel ended its apartheid ways. This fantasy is exemplified by the just released scurrilous tract Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, by Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter.

Now, basic to apartheid, the legal regime in South Africa until 1994, was the denationalization of blacks because they were black and forced removal to state-created homelands. Israel has not taken away the citizenship of even one Israeli citizen on the basis that the citizen is ethnic Palestinian, then forcibly removed that person to a territory designated for ethnic Palestinians.

The European Union Monitoring Centre defines anti-Semitism to encompass "claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour." Though Mr. Carter ends up in the wrong destination, he starts from a reasonable location, sympathy for the plight of Palestinians. He goes astray by refusing to blame Palestinians for their misery, by rejecting the reality that it is a self-inflicted consequence of their own anti-Zionism. The labelling of Israel as an apartheid state is an attempt to justify or excuse the continuing Palestinian refusal to accept peace with Israel.

Within Israel, there is an active discussion about unilateral withdrawal of Israelis from the West Bank as a means of lessening anti-Zionist attacks against Israelis. But the notion that such a move would lead to complete peace between Israel and its neighbours belongs to the realm of fantasy.

The World Council of Churches provides a good example of that fantasy. Just before Christmas, the World Council of Churches encouraged members to sell off investments in companies profiting from Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It justified the call as one of the "things that makes for peace" and said "the occupation is at the centre of the cycle of violence in the region."

Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The World Council of Churches' position fits that description.

Israel withdrew from Lebanon. But the result was not peace with Lebanon. Rather, it was the growth of the terrorist organization Hezbollah and massive rocket attacks from Lebanon directed against civilian centres inside Israel.

Israel withdrew from Gaza. But the result was not progress toward peace with the Palestinians. Rather, it was the election of Hamas and rocket attacks from Gaza against civilian centres inside Israel.

Anti-Zionists are against the existence of Israel, period. Israeli control of the West Bank is a club with which to beat the Israelis. But if it is gone, they will find another. Indeed, they have found many others.

All too many have allowed their hope for peace on Earth to lead them astray. Peace in the Middle East will not come so easily, just by pretending that the charges anti-Zionists fabricate against Israel are true. On the contrary, when wishful thinkers echo and reinforce anti-Zionist war propaganda, they make ever louder the drumbeats of war.

David Matas is senior honorary counsel to B'nai Brith Canada. His latest book is Aftershock: Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism.