Toward the end of World War I, Chaim Weizmann, head of the World Zionist Organization and later the first president of Israel, established cordial relations with Emir Faisal, the son of Sherif Hussein of Mecca and later the first king of Iraq. Shortly thereafter, the two would sign an agreement establishing an alliance between an unborn Jewish state and an unborn Arab one, as recounted by the Israel State Archives:

On June 17, 1918, Weizmann wrote to his wife Vera in London about the romantic journey along the Red Sea past the “glowing mountains” of Sinai via Aqaba to the Anglo-Arab army in southeast Transjordan. Here he met Faisal: “the first real Arab nationalist I have met. He is a leader! He is quite intelligent and a very honest man, handsome as a picture. He is not interested in Palestine, but on the other hand he wants Damascus and the whole of northern Syria.”

Weizmann noted that [Faisal] he was contemptuous of the Palestinians and did not regard them as Arabs. He saw Faisal as an alternative to the Palestinian leadership, which was hostile to the Zionists’ aspirations. . . . Weizmann did not realize the depth of Arab nationalism, which was in its early stages but would quickly gain ground.

In December 1918, Faisal and Weizmann met again in London. In the interim, Faisal had captured Damascus, which he hoped would be the capital of the Arab kingdom promised by the British, but his regime there was fragile. In their talk on December 11, Weizmann promised help from the Zionist movement. . . . An agreement was drawn up, signed on January 3, 1919, in which Faisal expressed approval of the Balfour Declaration and Jewish settlement in Palestine. Other clauses ensured freedom of religion and Muslim control of the holy places sacred to Islam.

That accord was short-lived. Giving in to the demands of Arab nationalists, Faisal petitioned the Western powers for an Arab state that included Palestine. In short order, the British allowed France to take over Syria (against the wishes of both Faisal and Weizmann), Faisal became king of Iraq, and nothing came of his earlier alliance with the Zionists.

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.