Early on in the Syrian civil war, the U.S. lent its support to rebel groups fighting Islamic State by giving them arms, funds, and military training. While the efforts were likely hamstrung by the Obama administration’s unwillingness to annoy Iran, to Aaron Eitan Meyer the very premise that allies can be bought with so-called “train-and-equip” programs is flawed. He points instead to the example of Orde Wingate, the British officer who led efforts to suppress the Arab revolt in Mandatory Palestine, trained the Haganah in counterinsurgency warfare, and directed campaigns in Ethiopia and Burma during World War II:

The dominant theory [in Wingate’s time]—which has, disturbingly, persisted into present thinking—was that local forces could be induced to fight by offering them arms and materiel, which is to say the methods by which the British supported the Hashemite anti-Ottoman Arab revolt during World War I. To say that Wingate was opposed to [this] model (which came to be largely associated with T.E. Lawrence, or “Lawrence of Arabia”) is a severe understatement. . . .

What then was Wingate’s method? [T]o invite the assistance of local chieftains by demonstrating the commitment of his own forces first.

Prior to departing Sudan, [where he led Ethiopian forces to victory over the Italians], Wingate wrote a memorandum in which he explained that the local fighter “must see us first, not fighting by his side, but in front of him. He must realize not only that we are brave soldiers but devoted to the cause of liberty. Cease trying to stimulate revolt from without; . . . let’s do something ourselves.” At the risk of extreme oversimplification, Wingate’s method relied not on transient loyalty bought with weapons but on demonstrably committing one’s own forces to a given struggle, and thereafter permitting local forces to play a part of their own accord.

In our cost-conscious world, we are ever more steered toward offering armaments from the shadows and loud proclamations in public, and then [expressing concern] that we must be careful in providing assistance lest our present allies later turn on us. . . . The U.S. must begin by asserting that the cause for which others fight, whether it be in Syria, Kurdistan, or any of the regions within Iran where people are struggling against a tyrannical regime, is its own. Once committed, Washington will need to follow through, but with the knowledge that the correct calculus lies in both thwarting the regional ambitions of hostile state actors and in supporting fundamental human rights sought by those who could—and should—be its natural allies.

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.