While few refugees from the Syrian civil war have fled to Israel, the Jewish state faces an influx of others similar to that now inundating Europe. Gideon Sa’ar discusses the threat posed to Israel by permeable borders, and what can be done:

Over the past decade, Israel has been challenged by large-scale migration from Africa, mainly from Eritrea and Sudan. Tens of thousands infiltrated into Israel from the Sinai border in order to find employment. . . . [Eventually], it was decided that a fence was to be built on the Israeli-Egyptian border, while the preventive and deterrent measures employed included the legal recourse of holding infiltrators in prolonged detention. An integrated policy was later introduced, designed to reduce the number of migrants in city centers and in Israel as a whole, and to encourage their voluntary departure. . . . [But after the Israeli supreme court struck down some of these measures], the entry of migrants into Israel resumed in the second half of 2015, although on a smaller scale. . . .

An additional challenge facing Israel revolves around illegal residents and the possibility of a non-military mass storming of its borders. Israel does not have adequate control over those coming from Palestinian Authority territory, and the Israel Security Agency estimates that there are 50,000 illegal residents in Israeli territory at any given time. More than a few terrorist attacks in the current wave were carried out by illegal residents. . . .

Israel must realize that its standard of living and proximity to conflict-torn areas in the Middle East and Africa expose it to the ongoing risk of illegal immigration. In response to this challenge, Israel must therefore adopt a clear, resolute policy. The failure of Europe in coping with mass immigration should act as a warning sign, as Israel faces the challenge of protecting its character as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

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.