There seems to be widespread agreement in Israel’s left-wing media, and in mainstream media everywhere else, that Benjamin Netanyahu is an anti-Arab bigot. His policies, writes Robert Cherry, suggest something far different:

For a start, affirmative-action policies initiated under Ehud Olmert were accelerated during the Netanyahu administration. These prioritized economic development, including allocating funds for joint industrial parks in Arab and Jewish towns. Subsidies helped firms hire Arab labor and expanded transportation infrastructure, which allowed Arabs to reach employment sites. These ventures were so successful that the government began setting up industrial parks and employment offices exclusively in Arab towns. In addition, the Israeli government developed a five-year plan for improving Arab education and established a special unit in the prime minister’s office to promote economic development in the Arab community. . . .

At the same time, educational and occupational initiatives began to improve the possibilities for Arab women, whose labor-participation rates increased substantially. . . . As a result of [such] policies, between 2005 and 2011, the inflation-adjusted Arab net family income increased by 7.4 percent. . . .

Critics have tried to ignore or undermine these beneficial government policies. For instance, Palestinian nationalists have discouraged cooperation with Israel ministries. . . . When the government opened up national service to Arab Israelis [as an alternative to military service, from which they are exempt], nationalists, led by Balad-party activists, engaged in intimidation to discourage participation. Despite these efforts, enrollment grew dramatically and the sociologist Sammy Smooha reported that 90 percent of participants take pride and satisfaction in their service.

Another [example] of tunnel vision [can be found in] the liberal media, which give prominence to allegations or proven cases of anti-Arab sentiment among Israeli Jews. . . . But contra the liberal doomsayers, there is significant evidence of softening attitudes among Israeli Jews toward Israeli Arabs, despite the reverse not being the case.

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.