Last week, two of Saudi Arabia’s former government ministers—one now the secretary general of the Muslim World League and the other Riyadh’s ambassador to France—visited a Parisian synagogue. In October, a Saudi prince participated in a public discussion of Middle East politics with a former Mossad director at a New York synagogue. Elliott Abrams, noting that such things can’t occur without official approval, sees them as positive signs of change within Saudi Arabia but cautions against reading too much into them:

The Trump administration’s efforts to “fast-forward” Israeli-Saudi relations have not succeeded. . . . The [White House] was counting on Saudi and pan-Arab desire to help the Palestinians and help the “peace process” to overcome the Arab desire to avoid political danger, but that was an overestimation of the degree of Arab official concern about the Palestinians. Arab regimes do care about the Palestinians, but they care about themselves and their own political health far more.

Nonetheless, Abrams sees reason for optimism:

[The synagogue visit] is a small step, of course; this is not Sadat visiting Jerusalem to speak to the Knesset, an event that happened almost exactly 40 years ago (November 19, 1977). But it is not exactly nothing, either. It fits within a recent pattern that should be recognized and encouraged. [However], I think the Saudis are getting most of what they want from Israel in secret military and intelligence channels. I doubt they will take big risks by doing things in public that might bring significant attacks on them.

But they will do some things, and this [synagogue visit] is a potentially important one. . . . Given the growth of anti-Semitism in Europe and globally in recent years, having the Saudis publicly demonstrate respect for Judaism is a helpful and useful step—for Israel and for Jews. Let’s hope it is followed by more. If the Saudi ambassador to France can visit a synagogue, can the Saudi ambassador to Washington—who happens to be the king’s son? Can the head of the World Muslim League issue a strong and clear denunciation of anti-Semitism and all religious hatred? Can the Saudis cleanse their textbooks of anti-Semitic material? Such steps seemed ridiculous not so long ago, but these are questions that may seriously be asked today—with at least some hope that in future years the answer might be yes.

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.