Now that the nuclear deal with Iran has been completed, and it is unlikely that there will be sufficient votes in Congress to derail it, some have wondered if the Israeli prime minister erred in his vocal opposition, hurting U.S.-Israel relations without successfully stopping the deal. A similar criticism has been leveled against AIPAC. Elliott Abrams finds such criticism utterly without merit:

Netanyahu has always seen the issue of Iran’s nuclear-weapons program as existential for Israel. In that case, how could he not try to change the political calculus in the United States? Should he have pulled his punches, said less, made this a smaller issue—not tried, that is, to win the argument?

[Furthermore], Netanyahu has won the argument: most Americans are highly skeptical of the Iran deal and don’t like it, and it will be disapproved in both houses of Congress, [although the president will surely override congressional disapproval]. In the last months opinion has shifted against the deal, and Netanyahu can take some credit for that. But his critics don’t blame him for losing, they blame him for trying. . . .

As for relations with the United States, there are no polls suggesting any damage at all. Americans don’t appear to blame an Israeli prime minister who argues for his country’s security. . . So what are we talking about here? We are talking about damaging relations with the Obama administration. To that argument there are two answers. First, it’s a diminishing problem, because we are already in the election season. . . . Second, it is also hard to believe that relations with Obama will actually be worsened—only because they are already so bad. . . .

Netanyahu has taught a lesson that’s valuable for the future: an Israeli prime minister who is convinced of his position may take on such a fight even if everyone predicts he will lose it. He or she will not shy away due to political calculations and vote-counting predictions, a very good precedent when matters of national security are at risk. That last calculation applies to AIPAC as well.

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.