Last week, the American vice president traveled to Israel to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders; his arrival coincided with multiple terrorist attacks, one of which left an American citizen, Taylor Force, dead and several Israelis wounded. Khaled Abu Toameh writes:

Biden arrived in the region hoping to persuade the Palestinian leaders to issue a “condemnation” of the reign of terror [that began in October], which they continue to describe as a “popular and peaceful uprising.” . . . The Palestinian president, [in response], offered “condolences” over the killing of a U.S. citizen in Jaffa the previous day, . . . “while stressing at the same time that the occupation authorities [sic] have killed 200 Palestinians over the past five months,” according to a statement released by the PA leadership. . . . Abbas is doubtless also upset because Israel has killed Palestinian stabbers and shooters.

[Yet just] before Biden arrived in Ramallah, Abbas’s Fatah faction praised the murderer of Force, calling him a “martyr.” Fatah was quick to delete the posts to avoid embarrassing the Palestinian leadership during Biden’s visit.

It seems, [then], that the murder of an American visitor is condemnable, but the murder of some 34 Israelis since last October, including a pregnant woman and [numerous] civilians, is somewhat less so. . . . But Abbas explained everything to Biden: Israel was in fact fully responsible for the “violence and bloodshed” because of the “occupation” and “settlements.” . . .

While Abbas was busy offering his condolences for the killing of the U.S. citizen, his ruling Fatah faction was busy glorifying Palestinian assailants who killed Israelis.

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.