As an officer in the Waffen-SS, Otto Skorzeny conducted a variety of clandestine operations, including sneaking Nazi troops wearing American uniforms behind enemy lines. After the war, his career took an unexpected turn: he was recruited by the Mossad to help locate (and sometimes assassinate) German scientists who had worked for Hitler and were now helping Egypt develop advanced rockets and other military technologies. Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman tell his story:

The Israelis would never find a Nazi they could trust, but they saw a Nazi they could count on: someone thorough and determined, with a record of success in executing innovative plans and skilled at keeping secrets. The seemingly bizarre decision to recruit Skorzeny came with some personal pain, because the task was entrusted to Joe Raanan, who, [like Skorzeny, was] born in Vienna and who had barely escaped the Holocaust. . . . After the Nazis took over in 1938, [Joe] was sent—at age sixteen—to British-ruled Palestine. His mother and younger brother stayed in Europe and perished. . . .

As requested by the Israelis, [Skorzeny] flew to Egypt and compiled a detailed list of German scientists and their addresses. Skorzeny also provided the names of many front companies in Europe that were procuring and shipping components for Egypt’s military projects. . . .

Skorzeny . . . surprise[d] the Israelis with his level of cooperation. During a trip to Egypt, he even mailed exploding packages; one Israeli-made bomb killed five Egyptians in [a] military rocket site . . . where German scientists worked. The campaign of intimidation was largely successful, with most of the Germans leaving Egypt.

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.