From time to time, someone will ask me, "What happened to Jimmy Carter?" The questioner is usually someone who thought highly of the former president and is now confronted with Carter’s incessant anti-Israel bias, as reflected in his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" and his just completed trip to the Middle East.

I respond to the well-meaning question that, in fact, nothing much has "happened" to Jimmy Carter, that the signs of what he has become were there all along. And I say that, fully aware of the role he played at Camp David to bring about the groundbreaking an Egyptian-Israel agreement and eventually a peace treaty.

It now seems like ancient history, but troubles between Carter and Israel started early on in his presidency. Some attributed them to a difficult relationship between him and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and some cover those difficulties in ideological terms.