Rep. Bernie Sanders, an independent who was backed by the Democrats, won Vermont's Senate seat.

Rep. Ben Cardin, also a Democrat, took Maryland's seat. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent in Connecticut who has pledged to vote with the Democratic caucus, also won.

Another two Jewish incumbent senators won re-election: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.).

The wins raise Jewish representation in the Senate to 13, the most Jewish members that body has had.

There were 26 Jews in the House in the last Congress.

Six Jewish Democrats - in Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Arizona, Kentucky and New Hampshire - won freshman bids.

That means at least 30 Jews will serve in the House in the next Congress.

Lieberman is a Soviet-born Jew who made aliyah in 1978, at age 21. He served in the Israeli Defense Forces, studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and was politically active in Zionism and socialism, leading in the right-wing Likud party and then Knesset in 1999. In 2001, he was appointed Minister of National Infrastructures.

In 2004, Lieberman said any Arabs who weren't "completely loyal" to the state of Israel should be kicked out, and advocated a controversial "population swap" aiming for "the most homogenously Jewish state." (4) He was sacked from the cabinet after opposing then-PM Ariel Sharon's plan for withdrawal from Jewish settlements in Gaza.

Lieberman continued to advocate loyalty tests for Arab Israelis while leading the Yisrael Beiteinu party he founded. In March 2006, Lieberman's party won 11 out of the 120 Knesset seats.

"Lieberman's party stands," says Counterpunch, "for one thing: an Israel finally cleansed of the remainder of the indigenous Palestinian population." (5) Knesset minister Ophir Pines said Lieberman advocates "the expulsion of 90 percent of Israeli Arabs including those in Jaffa." (6)

In May, Lieberman compared Arab Israeli politicians to Nazis, and said he hoped for the death by execution of Arab Knesset members who meet with Hamas and observe the Palestinian Nakba (day of catastrophe) on "Israel's Independence Day." (7)

Two years ago, Lieberman was sacked by Sharon for his blunt racism, and opposing Gaza withdrawal. But Sharon's successor has returned Lieberman to the top levels of government, proving how much mainstream support exists for his racist platform.

Arab politician Ahmed Tibi is one Israeli who hates Lieberman's agenda. He calls Lieberman "a very dangerous and sophisticated politician who has won his support through race hatred." (8)

Picture this happening in the USA: the second most popular candidate for president in 2008 is a public advocate for the expulsion of non-whites from the country and forced loyalty tests for whatever brown-skinned people remain. He says on NBC, "Will America be a democratic country or a white man's country? I want it to be a white man's country."

This picture isn't half ugly enough. It would only be a real comparison if America had enshrined racism in our laws, interned a dispossessed people in a refugee camp to rot, pilfered billions in aid from a foreign government we had infiltrated, spied upon, and deceived... There is too much evil to list.

American Jews and Christian evangelicals who naively support our "democratic ally in the Middle East" should think long and hard about why we're pouring $3 billion yearly into the pockets of men like Lieberman. Our moral support and financial aid underwrite a nation of institutionalized injustice, of racism both on the street and in the seats of government.

When will America wake up?

"A catastrophe was narrowly avoided by our troops," Alliot-Marie said, according to a transcript of her comments. She did not say exactly when or where the events took place.

Israeli F-15s descended rapidly and then rose quickly as if they were dropping bombs or firing at the French ground forces, which are part of U.N. peacekeeping force UNIFIL, she said.

"In legitimate defense, our soldiers removed the covers from the missile battery and were two seconds away from firing at the planes that were threatening them," she said.

Israeli jets have routinely flown over Lebanon since a 34-day war between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas ended on August 14 in a U.N.-sponsored ceasefire and the expanded deployment of international peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese government and the U.N. force say the Israeli flights violate a U.N. ceasefire resolution. But Israel says the missions are necessary to help ensure that arms are not smuggled into southern Lebanon from Syria to resupply Hezbollah.

France has repeatedly called on Israel to stop the flights.

"I therefore draw your attention, after having done so at the U.N., to the respect needed for UNIFIL forces and to the risk that irresponsible pilots take by acting this way," Alliot-Marie told lawmakers.

The Israeli air force was also involved last month in two encounters with German forces.

The first concerned two planes which a German paper said had fired twice as they flew over a German navy ship. Israel denied they fired but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed regret over what he called "misunderstandings."

A subsequent incident, described by Germany as "not menacing," involved a German navy helicopter and Israeli F-16 fighters.

Israel's main and most powerful ally, the United States, called the strike a "terrible tragedy that we deeply regret," but urged Palestinians to exercise restraint.

While Israeli leaders offered regret about the "tragedy" and offered aid for the wounded, the international community urged a halt to Gaza operations, which have killed more than 300 Palestinians since a soldier's capture in late June.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered a halt to all artillery fire in the coastal strip pending an inquiry, but officials said the four-month operation against militants, launched after the seizure of Corporal Gilad Shalit, would continue, and an air raid later Wednesday killed two militants in eastern Gaza City.

Among the 18 people killed in the Beit Hanun shelling were eight children and five women, medics said. Eleven of the dead were from the same family.

Dozens were also wounded when shells slammed into a row of five apartment blocks in the early morning.

"I ran away and saw a second shell strike the houses. A shell fell on people who had run out into the street," said resident Ataf Ahmed, 22, following the attack, which came a day after Israel ended a deadly ground operation in Beit Hanun.

Another two Palestinians, including a Hamas gunman, were killed in the nearby refugee camp of Jabaliya. Five others, including four militants, were killed in a pre-dawn raid near the flashpoint city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, medics said.

A three-day mourning period was declared in the Palestinian territories, while Abbas and Hamas premier Ismail Haniya expressed a rare show of unity, holding hands on their way to donate blood at a Gaza hospital.

In a joint statement, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Peretz "expressed their regret over the deaths of Palestinian civilians" and "offered... urgent humanitarian assistance and immediate medical care for the wounded."

"Israel does everything to avoid hitting innocent civilian populations during operations, unfortunately tragedies sometimes happen. We are sorry," Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said.

An army spokeswoman said artillery had been trained on an area used by Palestinian militants to fire rockets into Israel. Twelve rockets hit Israel over the past 24 hours and some 50 over the past week, she said.

Wednesday's deaths, together with 64 Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip over the previous seven days, brought to more than 80 the number killed in Israeli operations in the territories in seven days.

Top officials of Hamas and moderate Abbas's Fatah party called for a resumption of suicide attacks in Israel, nearly two years after factions agreed to abide by an informal truce in such bombings.

"We urge our mujahedeen (fighters) everywhere to resume martyr operations (suicide attacks) in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa and everywhere else," Hamas's Nizar Rayan shouted into loudspeakers during protests in Beit Lahiya.

Hamas's exiled political supremo Khaled Meshaal vowed from his Damascus headquarters that the deaths would be avenged, saying "the heroes of the resistance... will respond by acts."

Israeli police went on alert following the threats.

Abbas condemned Israel's "terrible massacre" and together with Haniya demanded an urgent UN Security Council meeting to stop the bloodshed.

"You (the Israelis) do not want peace at all. You have destroyed all chances of peace and you should bear all the responsibility," he said.

The Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights called for a halt to Gaza operations, saying that more than 60 percent of those killed since late June were civilians and more than 20 percent minors.

The Israeli attack was condemned worldwide.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Abbas to express "deep sorrow" over the deaths, his spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.

The Beit Hanun deaths came just five days before Olmert was due to meet US President George W. Bush in Washington, and Abbas asked Rice "to move to stop Israeli aggression in the Palestinian territories," Rudeina said.

But US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said "the response to the loss of innocent lives is not go out and take revenge ... on other innocents."

The UN special envoy for the Middle East, Alvaro de Soto, urged Israel and the Palestinians to stop attacks against each other.

The European Union called the event "profoundly shocking," saying "Israel has a right to defend itself, but not at the price of the lives of the innocent."

Arab League chief Amr Mussa said the attack was an unjustified "massacre of children, women and civilians."

Turkey, an Israeli regional ally, spoke up against "disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force against (Palestinian) rocket attacks."

Jordan and Egypt, the only two Arab countries to have peace treaties with Israel, slammed the "horrible massacre" and "immoral and inhumane attack" respectively.

Cries of "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) filled the air as the bodies were placed in their graves. The youngest was an 18-month-old girl laid in the ground by her weeping father.

After the burials, a Fatah official pledged vengeance on Israel in a loudspeaker address to the crowds.

"Killers in Israel, you will never be able to defeat one Palestinian child," said Abdul Hakim Awad.

"We say, an eye for an eye and a soul for a soul. There will be no security in Ashkelon, no security in Tel Aviv or Haifa, until our people in Beit Hanoun are made secure."

Palestinian leaders have called Wednesday's attack a massacre, and some Hamas lawmakers in Gaza have threatened to resume suicide attacks against Israel as a result.

The shelling came 24 hours after Israel announced it ended Operation Autumn Clouds in the town which had claimed lives of more than 50 Palestinian militants and civilians.

"It was a Tsunami hitting Beit Hanoun," 41-year-old police officer Ahmed Sehwail told Xinhua, adding "devastation everywhere, Beit Hanoun was turned from paradise into broken remains."

Sehwail said the town was famous for its citrus groves but after six years of intifada (uprising), little has survived.

He said that it was difficult to walk, as mud covered streets, adding the water network was destroyed. Whole infrastructure, including electricity, broke down, he added.

Abu Samir al-Basuni, a 54-year-old Beit Hanoun resident, said, "The area seemed to survive an earthquake, and remains of houses scattered around and some people could not recognize their homes."

Al-Basuni said that more than 50 houses were razed out and they (the Israelis) also ruined parts of a cemetery.

Beit Hanoun, with a population of 40,000, had been a small agricultural village and had recently become a town.

The town is the nearest area to the borders between the Gaza Strip and Israel.

Israel said the operation was aimed at preventing Palestinian militants from firing homemade rockets into southern Israel but it seemed that the goal was not achieved as dozens of rockets were launched at Israeli towns and communities.

Ahmed al-Kafarna, a student, said that rocket attacks would continue even when Beit Hanoun was gripped by Israel. "We launch rockets to respond to Israeli crimes. It is a matter of action and reaction and they (the Israelis) begin with this circle."

Large tents were set up and hundreds of mourners gathered in grief but they did not show any regret over rocket attacks against Israel.

"Bomb with Qassam rocket, bomb it in the face of oppression," chanted a song through loudspeakers near one tent.

Many people expressed support to rocket attacks, shouting "we support Hamas."

Both President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haneya condemned the Israeli shelling as "awful massacre" and urged the UN Security Council to convene an urgent session to impose punishments on Israel.

In addition, senior Hamas official Nizar Rayyan in the Gaza Strip called for an immediate renewal of suicide bombing attacks in Israel to avenge the killing.

"Fifteen of the warnings were specific," head of Police Operations Division Barti Ohayon was quoted as saying. Following the strike in Gaza that left 19 Palestinians dead, alert levels were raised nationwide.

Police will focus on crowded places and set more roadblocks, Ohayon added.

Early Wednesday morning, Israeli artillery shells struck Beit Hanoun, killing at least 19 Palestinians and wounding dozens of others. Eight children and four women were among the dead.

The killing has drawn condemnation, while some Palestinian resistance groups vowed to avenge the bloodshed.

A senior Fatah official Wednesday urged the organization's military wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, to carry out suicide bombings against Israeli civilian targets to avenge the Beit Hanoun incident.

"I call on all the armed groups everywhere to avenge the blood of the dead with suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, as Israel murders Palestinians," said Jamal Abed, who heads Fatah in northern Gaza Strip.

Three years later, Perle and I meet again at his home outside Washington, D.C. It is October, the worst month for U.S. casualties in Iraq in almost two years, and Republicans are bracing for losses in the upcoming midterm elections. As he looks into my eyes, speaking slowly and with obvious deliberation, Perle is unrecognizable as the confident hawk who, as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, had invited the exiled Iraqi dissident Ahmad Chalabi to its first meeting after 9/11. "The levels of brutality that we've seen are truly horrifying, and I have to say, I underestimated the depravity," Perle says now, adding that total defeat-an American withdrawal that leaves Iraq as an anarchic "failed state"-is not yet inevitable but is becoming more likely. "And then," says Perle, "you'll get all the mayhem that the world is capable of creating."

According to Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, this unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President George W. Bush. Perle says, "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.... At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.... I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty."

Perle goes so far as to say that, if he had his time over, he would not have advocated an invasion of Iraq: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.' ... I don't say that because I no longer believe that Saddam had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, or that he was not in contact with terrorists. I believe those two premises were both correct. Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."

Having spoken with Perle, I wonder: What do the rest of the pro-war neoconservatives think? If the much caricatured "Prince of Darkness" is now plagued with doubt, how do his comrades-in-arms feel? I am particularly interested in finding out because I interviewed many neocons before the invasion and, like many people, found much to admire in their vision of spreading democracy in the Middle East.

I expect to encounter disappointment. What I find instead is despair, and fury at the incompetence of the Bush administration the neoconservatives once saw as their brightest hope.

To David Frum, the former White House speechwriter who co-wrote Bush's 2002 State of the Union address that accused Iraq of being part of an "axis of evil," it now looks as if defeat may be inescapable, because "the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them." This situation, he says, must ultimately be blamed on "failure at the center"-starting with President Bush.

Kenneth Adelman, a lifelong neocon activist and Pentagon insider who served on the Defense Policy Board until 2005, wrote a famous op-ed article in The Washington Post in February 2002, arguing: "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." Now he says, "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

Fearing that worse is still to come, Adelman believes that neoconservatism itself-what he defines as "the idea of a tough foreign policy on behalf of morality, the idea of using our power for moral good in the world"-is dead, at least for a generation. After Iraq, he says, "it's not going to sell." And if he, too, had his time over, Adelman says, "I would write an article that would be skeptical over whether there would be a performance that would be good enough to implement our policy. The policy can be absolutely right, and noble, beneficial, but if you can't execute it, it's useless, just useless. I guess that's what I would have said: that Bush's arguments are absolutely right, but you know what, you just have to put them in the drawer marked can't do. And that's very different from let's go."

I spend the better part of two weeks in conversations with some of the most respected voices among the neoconservative elite. What I discover is that none of them is optimistic. All of them have regrets, not only about what has happened but also, in many cases, about the roles they played. Their dismay extends beyond the tactical issues of whether America did right or wrong, to the underlying question of whether exporting democracy is something America knows how to do.

I will present my findings in full in the January issue of Vanity Fair, which will reach newsstands in New York and L.A. on December 6 and nationally by December 12. In the meantime, here is a brief survey of some of what I heard from the war's remorseful proponents.

Richard Perle: "In the administration that I served [Perle was an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan], there was a one-sentence description of the decision-making process when consensus could not be reached among disputatious departments: 'The president makes the decision.' [Bush] did not make decisions, in part because the machinery of government that he nominally ran was actually running him. The National Security Council was not serving [Bush] properly. He regarded [then National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice] as part of the family."

Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute freedom scholar: "Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes."

Frank Gaffney, an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan and founder of the Center for Security Policy: "[Bush] doesn't in fact seem to be a man of principle who's steadfastly pursuing what he thinks is the right course. He talks about it, but the policy doesn't track with the rhetoric, and that's what creates the incoherence that causes us problems around the world and at home. It also creates the sense that you can take him on with impunity."

Kenneth Adelman: "The most dispiriting and awful moment of the whole administration was the day that Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to [former C.I.A. director] George Tenet, General Tommy Franks, and [Coalition Provisional Authority chief] Jerry [Paul] Bremer-three of the most incompetent people who've ever served in such key spots. And they get the highest civilian honor a president can bestow on anyone! That was the day I checked out of this administration. It was then I thought, There's no seriousness here, these are not serious people. If he had been serious, the president would have realized that those three are each directly responsible for the disaster of Iraq."

David Frum: "I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything."

Michael Rubin, former Pentagon Office of Special Plans and Coalition Provisional Authority staffer: "Where I most blame George Bush is that through his rhetoric people trusted him, people believed him. Reformists came out of the woodwork and exposed themselves." By failing to match his rhetoric with action, Rubin adds, Bush has betrayed Iraqi reformers in a way that is "not much different from what his father did on February 15, 1991, when he called the Iraqi people to rise up, and then had second thoughts and didn't do anything once they did."

Richard Perle: "Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad. I'm getting damn tired of being described as an architect of the war. I was in favor of bringing down Saddam. Nobody said, 'Go design the campaign to do that.' I had no responsibility for that."

Kenneth Adelman: "The problem here is not a selling job. The problem is a performance job.... Rumsfeld has said that the war could never be lost in Iraq, it could only be lost in Washington. I don't think that's true at all. We're losing in Iraq.... I've worked with [Rumsfeld] three times in my life. I've been to each of his houses, in Chicago, Taos, Santa Fe, Santo Domingo, and Las Vegas. I'm very, very fond of him, but I'm crushed by his performance. Did he change, or were we wrong in the past? Or is it that he was never really challenged before? I don't know. He certainly fooled me."

Eliot Cohen, director of the strategic-studies program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and member of the Defense Policy Board: "I wouldn't be surprised if what we end up drifting toward is some sort of withdrawal on some sort of timetable and leaving the place in a pretty ghastly mess.... I do think it's going to end up encouraging various strands of Islamism, both Shia and Sunni, and probably will bring de-stabilization of some regimes of a more traditional kind, which already have their problems.... The best news is that the United States remains a healthy, vibrant, vigorous society. So in a real pinch, we can still pull ourselves together. Unfortunately, it will probably take another big hit. And a very different quality of leadership. Maybe we'll get it."