The IDF has recently made public its discovery that Hamas has once again been constructing tunnels for infiltrating Israel and killing soldiers and civilians alike. This news, David Horovitz writes, suggests that the terrorist organization might decide that it must attack soon, before Israel finds a way to defend itself:

[P]repared or not, Hamas may now believe it has an urgent incentive to attack Israel again in the near future. It was widely and quite credibly argued, during and in the aftermath of 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, that Israel had narrowly avoided a devastating Hamas onslaught through the network of tunnels the terror group had set up at the time. It was suggested that Hamas had been planning to send hundreds of gunmen through those tunnels, to attack military and civilian targets, to massacre Israelis, to seize hostages—to remake radically the balance of power. It remains unclear to this day why Hamas chose not to attempt such an attack. . . .

With the cessation of hostilities, even as Israel was grappling and continues to grapple with the international community’s failure to understand what it faces from the Gaza terror state—step forward Bernie Sanders, BDS, et al.—Hamas went back to concerted tunneling and rocket manufacture. It has been gaining strength at a “surprising” pace, [an unnamed] senior IDF officer acknowledged in last week’s briefing. And it has been utilizing some 1,000 tunnelers, working around-the-clock six days a week. . . .

Perhaps, Hamas may be asking itself, Israel has been making gains of its own in this relentless battle of wills. Perhaps it has found technologies to combat even Hamas’s well-constructed, deep, and reinforced subterranean attack routes. (Israeli security sources were indeed quoted Monday talking about new “technologies” being utilized to find the tunnels.) . . .

Hamas, which insists on continuing its efforts to destroy Israel, and which demonstrates such supreme indifference to the well-being of the people of Gaza (and doubtless much cynical amusement at the naïveté of the international community), may feel that, fully ready or not, now is the time to attack.

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.