When, in 1977, the Egyptian president announced his intention to visit Israel, Moshe Dayan gave Menahem Milson—then the head of the Department of Arab Affairs for the military government of Judea and Samaria—a list of prominent Palestinian figures to invite to the arrival ceremony at the airport. As Milson accurately predicted, everyone on the list refused to attend. At Dayan’s behest, Milson then proceeded to invite Palestinian leaders of his own choosing—with significantly greater success. At play in this historical vignette was a fundamental difference in attitudes:

[Dayan frequently exhibited a] distaste for moderate Palestinians. He made it publicly known that he regarded Palestinian terrorism as a “natural” response to [the Palestinian] condition and consequently did not really take Palestinians who openly rejected terrorism seriously—even though it required a great deal of personal courage (and strong backing from one’s clan) to deviate publicly from the official PLO line. . . .

[Sadat’s visit] highlighted the substantial difference between two approaches to relations with the Palestinians: that of Dayan—the man who had determined Israel’s policy in the [occupied] territories since the 1967 war—and the very different approach in which I believed. The principle that guided me in all my work as adviser on Arab affairs, and later as head of the civil administration in the West Bank, was that Israel had to encourage and protect those Palestinians who favored coexistence, whether they were pro-Jordan or proponents of Palestinian independence. . . .

[On the third day of his visit], Sadat met with several of the Palestinian figures who had welcomed him at the airport. . . . Upon his return to Egypt, he declared: “In Jerusalem I met the real Palestinians.” It was, ironically, precisely the reverse of Moshe Dayan’s position.

Of course, this is all something like ancient history in Israeli-Palestinian relations by now. Over the last three-plus decades, we have seen the Oslo Accords and recurrent rounds of negotiations that have led nowhere. All the more reason, then, to recall those brave Palestinians who 38 years ago defied the PLO and welcomed Sadat at Ben-Gurion Airport.

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.