In 2013, Beijing announced its “Belt and Road initiative,” which involves the expansion of commercial ties, together with sponsorship of infrastructure projects, to connect China with Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Official rhetoric speaks of creating a 21st-century version of the ancient Silk Road as well as a parallel “maritime Silk Road.” To this end, China has made various economic inroads into the eastern Mediterranean. One Chinese company, for instance, has purchased the rights to manage the Greek port of Piraeus, while another has won a contract to construct a new port in the Israeli city of Ashdod. As George Tzogopoulos explains, both Greece and Israel, despite their very different economic situations, share an interest in making the most of economic ties with China without allowing it to upset the U.S.-backed geopolitical order, and both have reasons for concern:

Israel’s main source of anxiety is the proliferation of non-conventional Chinese arms in the Middle East. Beijing has supplied weapons systems and missile technology to countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Libya, which have leaked them to terrorist groups like Hizballah. Jerusalem is particularly concerned about China’s ties with Iran. . . . Improved Sino-Israeli relations have not deterred Beijing from exporting arms to Jerusalem’s potential enemies, including the Islamic Republic. China remains committed to the 2015 agreement on Iran’s nuclear program and is not pleased with Donald Trump’s doubts about it. . . .

From a broader perspective, China’s developing relations with Greece and Israel are part of a multidimensional foreign policy in the Mediterranean basin that also includes . . . Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, and Turkey. At first glance, Beijing’s motivations are economic and geopolitical. But some voices are warning against China’s potential involvement in the Mediterranean, seeing security implications as well as militarization dangers. This argument is linked to Beijing’s White Paper on armed forces published in April 2013 that stipulates protection of overseas energy resources and Chinese nationals abroad as major security concerns to be shouldered by the country’s military. . . .

[Furthermore], Sino-Russian naval exercises took place in the Mediterranean in May 2015, increasing Western concerns. . . . Beijing’s growing footprint in the Mediterranean presents both a challenge and an opportunity for the U.S. and Europe. In that regard, Greece and Israel cannot overlook developing military ties between China on the one hand and Turkey and Iran on the other. . . .

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.