This week, the president of Cyprus is making an official visit to Israel. In the view of Gal Luft, Jerusalem would benefit from fostering closer relations with the island nation, which is its “only non-majority-Muslim neighbor”:

Cyprus and Israel share significant natural gas reserves. . . . [L]ike Israel, Cyprus has yet to figure out how to turn its gas bonanza into cash. There is room to mesh both countries’ efforts to develop their energy resources and collectively embark on a regional energy-development plan. . . .

Cyprus is [also] in a unique position to offer Israel a coveted prize: strategic depth. On July 22, 2014 . . . a Hamas rocket landing near Ben-Gurion airport led to a four-day shutdown of Israel’s outlet to the world. This experience ensures that in the next round of fighting, Israel’s airports will be at the top of Hamas’s or Hizballah’s target list.

Israel should seek an alternative airport—far from the missile range—to enable the flow of passengers and supplies into and out of the country in times of emergency. A mere 40-minute flight or four-hour boat ride away, Cyprus can provide Israel with landing rights on its runways and hence an exit to the world. Such relationships can also extend into agreements to requisition fuel and military equipment should Israeli air-force bases come under fire, as well as airspace for training.

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.