On the basis of recent evidence, Amnon Rubinstein argues that Israeli Arabs are growing ever warmer to the Jewish state, and proposes ways for the government to encourage this trend:

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center reviewed [the attitudes of] local populations across the Middle East toward Islamic State. . . . Israel’s Muslim community came in second with an overwhelming 97 percent of participants saying they oppose the group, and only 1 percent saying they were sympathizers. . . . .

I believe the shift among Israeli Arabs stems from their deep disappointment with the Arab world and their slow, hesitant integration in Israeli society and the Israeli economy. For the first time in years, the heads of Arab local authorities have voiced their unequivocal support for cooperating with Israel and the Jews, and have urged their publics to abandon . . . conflict.

How can we accelerate this process? I suggest . . . a visit by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazareth. Symbolic acts can go a long way. . . . Second, cities with a mixed Jewish and Arab population must learn from the successful reality in Jaffa, and take steps in the direction of joint bilingual [school curricula]. . . .

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.