Yesterday, the Holy See signed a treaty granting official recognition to a putative Palestinian state ruled by Mahmoud Abbas. The American Interest comments:

[Recognition of Palestinian statehood] balances the Holy Father’s tough rhetoric against Islamists killing Christians with a step aimed at conciliating Muslim opinion. And the Pope also has to look after his flock: Palestinian Christians have long played an outsized role in Palestinian nationalism (as they have in other Arab nationalisms) as a way of winning acceptance in their community on a non-religious basis. . . . This gesture may, the Vatican feels, help protect a vulnerable part of the flock by bolstering the communal legitimacy of Palestinian Christians.

On the other hand, for all the tactical considerations, this marks a remarkable change in perceived moral superiority within a fairly short period of time—time during which Palestinian tactics have, if anything, become more brutal and flailing. Both the background of Pope Francis personally and the milieu of intellectual Europe in which many cardinals marinate now militate in favor of the Palestinian cause, whereas a generation ago the international left was broadly pro-Israel. This move, all told, though it will certainly annoy Israel, will likely not represent a huge change in the global status quo. It is, however, a sign of the times.

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.