It is a commonplace among supporters of the Israeli left that, had Yitzḥak Rabin not been murdered in 1995, he would have somehow seen the Oslo Accords to their conclusion and ended the conflict with the Palestinians. In this view, Rabin’s assassin killed both the prime minister and the peace process. Jeff Jacoby has his doubts:

Oslo was a disaster from the outset, arguably the worst self-inflicted wound in Israel’s history. . . . More Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorists in the 24 months following the famous handshake on the White House lawn than in any similar period in Israel’s history. In public, Rabin professed to be undaunted. . . . But privately, Rabin was having grave doubts. . . .

Amid the emotional public backlash that followed Rabin’s assassination, any repudiation of Oslo would have been deemed a victory for his assassin. . . . The Oslo process [thus] continued. Follow-up agreements were negotiated and signed. But fresh concessions from Israel only encouraged fresh violence from the Palestinians. . . . Had Rabin lived, the Oslo calamity might have been reversed long ago and the “peace now” delusion abandoned as a gamble that failed. But the bullets that killed a courageous prime minister also killed the chance of undoing his greatest blunder.

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.