Israel’s recent elections were a reminder for many of the instability of the country’s electoral system. Since 1988, not a single government has lived out its entire four-year term. Under the Basic Law, the seats of the Knesset are divided in direct proportion to the percentage of the vote won by each party. There are no electoral districts; nor is there a system (as in Britain and France) to ensure a clear victor in every election. Binyamin Lashkar argues that a modest change might do much good:

We need to be very careful when changing the rules of the game. There are always unexpected results. Perhaps we could try [to amend the laws so that] elections are held for the first 100 seats in the Knesset, and the party with the most votes will then be awarded the remaining twenty. This is a significant addition for winning; under such a system, the public will no doubt prefer voting for likely winners. . . . Such a change will create an incentive for parties to unite and will encourage the formation of two large parties which can easily run the country. And the land would be at peace—at least for four years.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.