During a visit to Jerusalem, the former secretary of state discussed current U.S. foreign policy, his own experiences in the Reagan administration, and the breakdown of the Middle East. He also reflected on Israel’s current situation (“All things considered . . . it’s doing well”) and the hostility it faces (“I think it’s a lot of anti-Semitism”), and told the story of his own involvement in Israel’s transition to capitalism. (Interview by David Horovitz.)

When I was in office as secretary of state (1982-89), I had a lot of dealings with Israel. And early on I was called on by prime ministers and foreign ministers to talk about security issues. I said to them, “Are you watching your economy?” And nobody even wanted to talk about it. . . . So sometime in the mid-1980s: hyperinflation. Big trouble. They came to me, and they said, “Well, you said we should pay attention. What should we do now?”

I told them what I thought they should do. My great friend Milton Friedman was my unpaid consultant. We developed ideas. . . . Then we made a deal—the Israeli government, the American Jewish community, and the American Congress. They all agreed: I would be the heavy; I would be the guy who said all the tough things. The other side of the deal was [the Israeli government] would do what I said. . . . We brought about the softest landing from hyperinflation anywhere.

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.