Last week, the French foreign minister announced that if his country’s latest attempt to restart the peace process fails to yield results, France will unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state. Besides the fact that this declaration blames Israel preemptively for the failure of future negotiations, writes Alan Baker, unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state would also violate France’s own commitments under the Oslo Accords, of which it is a signatory:

The commitments, set down in [the Oslo] agreement, to negotiate the permanent status of the territories as well as other central issues such as Jerusalem, borders, settlements, and refugees, are solemn Palestinian and Israeli obligations which France, together with its EU partners, as well as the United States, Russia, Egypt, Jordan, and Norway are obligated to honor after placing their signatures on the agreement as witnesses. . . .

[I]n threatening to recognize a Palestinian state unilaterally and arbitrarily, France is clearly prejudging the issue of the permanent status of the territory. . . . In this context, France and its European colleagues cannot and should not act to undermine the Palestinian obligation set out in . . . the agreement, according to which no step will be taken to “change the status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent-status negotiations.” . . .

In imposing its ultimatum and threat to recognize unilaterally a Palestinian state if France’s efforts to “make happen the solution of two states” should fail, France is, in effect, granting the Palestinian side the prerogative not to engage in any bona-fide negotiations with Israel, knowing that, [regardless of the outcome], France will unilaterally grant the Palestinians what they are demanding.

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.