A recent survey of young people in sixteen Arab countries reported declining support for the U.S. and increasing support for Russia. The American Interest comments:

[T]he survey recorded a seventeen-point increase among Arab youth who consider the U.S. an enemy, while the number of countries where a majority hold that view doubled. Antipathy to Donald Trump certainly seems to be a big factor here: 70 percent of respondents consider the president to be anti-Muslim. . . .

It would be a mistake, however, to lay all the blame for the dismal results here on President Trump. American influence in the Arab world declined precipitously under Barack Obama, while Russia has cannily exploited the vacuum to re-emerge as a credible power broker. Indeed, the impression of Russia as a more dependable, less fickle partner than the United States seems partly to explain the trend. . . . Countries with substantial Iranian proxies (like Iraq and Yemen) are more likely to favor Russia, while youth in such countries as Saudi Arabia and Qatar maintain a more favorable view of the United States.

Through a combination of Obama’s strategic failures, Trump’s anti-Muslim demagoguery, and Russia’s savvy opportunism, the next generation of Arab youth are losing faith in Washington, while Moscow’s star is on the rise.

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.