In November and December, a number of prominent American Jewish figures traveled to Qatar—including Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice-president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the head of the Zionist Organization of America Morton Klein, and the lawyer Alan Dershowitz. The visits seemed part of a charm offensive by Doha to win sympathy in the American Jewish community. On February 2, however, Al Jazeera—which is owned and operated by the emirate—sent letters to several pro-Israel groups in the U.S. letting them know that one of the network’s agents had infiltrated their organizations under false pretenses and secretly recorded conversations that will form the basis of a soon-to-be-released documentary. Armin Rosen tries to make sense of the coincidence of these two efforts:

Over a year ago, news broke that the universe of pro-Israel advocacy groups in Washington had been infiltrated by an undercover activist—who is almost certainly Tony Kleinfeld, a twenty-five-year-old British citizen, Oxford graduate, and Palestine-solidarity advocate. . . . [D]uring the summer and early autumn of 2016, Kleinfeld constructed a false pro-Israel persona, presented himself under a modified version of his first name, and enrolled in Georgetown University’s summer school with the hidden purpose of insinuating himself in pro-Israel groups in Washington. . . .

So, what did Kleinfeld actually find? According to the letters [from Al Jazeera], an operative with the network recorded a young, low-level AIPAC development staffer discussing “under-the-table” relations between Israel and the Arab Gulf states during an event the group held in Florida. . . . If Al Jazeera is sitting on [evidence of some violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act] or some other bombshell about the inner workings of pro-Israel organizations, it wasn’t in evidence. . . . What’s [most] striking about Kleinfeld’s efforts isn’t that he uncovered evidence of serious wrongdoing. Instead, after spending considerable resources and man-hours, . . . Al Jazeera may have documented nothing more wicked than Americans participating in their political system in normative (even, one might say, boring and uninspired) ways.

Because of the . . . . close connections between Al Jazeera and the regime, the extensive resources needed to carry out the undercover sting, and Kleinfeld’s alleged misrepresentation of both his identity and his reasons for being in the United States, many of the letters’ recipients now perceive themselves as victims of state-sponsored espionage. . . .

[The charm offensive last fall] and Kleinfeld’s work tell a dissonant story about Qatar’s view of the U.S. Jewish community: does Doha see American Jews as an obstacle or as an opportunity? Does the Qatari regime want to squeeze the Jewish community or embrace it? Both? Whatever its actual objectives in Washington, what’s clear is that American Jews somehow factor into them. . . . [In fact, both efforts] betray a Qatari preoccupation with American Jewish communal power, as well as a desire to address whichever challenges Doha believes Jewish influence raises for the country’s vast ambitions in Washington and beyond.

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.