No, writes Shmuel Even. Ten years after Israel evacuated troops and civilians from Gaza, the area remains a source of terror attacks, and Israel continues to be condemned for defending itself (article begins on p. 75):

The withdrawal from the Gaza Strip created a new reality that contributed to the Hamas takeover, a steep rise in weapons smuggling, the strengthening of terrorism, and the ensuing cycle of escalation. [T]he terrorism in the West Bank (and from there to Israel) can serve as a partial standard for comparison, [since no disengagement took place there]. The West Bank saw a steep drop in the number of terrorist attacks and Israeli casualties, following the security measures taken [there] and the end of the intifada. . . . [By contrast], the force of terrorism from Gaza and [Israeli involvement in] military operations intensified.

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.