Reflecting on the ten-year anniversary of Israel’s second Lebanon war, Moshe Arens assesses its outcome. To its credit in his view is the fact that it lasted for 33 days and was followed by ten years of quiet on the northern border. Israel, he notes, has fought four such inconclusive wars with its neighbors, interspersed with similar periods of quiet before they finally gave up their goal of destroying it. But can such a strategy work against Hizballah?

[T]he behavior of terrorists and their leaders differs from that of Arab rulers, whose primary concern is their political survival. Terrorists, who think in messianic terms and on a messianic time scale, are prepared to lose many battles, confident that in due time victory will be theirs. [Furthermore], the acquisition of ballistic rockets and missiles by terrorist organizations has introduced a new dimension into their conflicts with Israel, providing them, despite being much weaker militarily, with a deterrent capability that Jerusalem must take into account. . . .

The ten years after the second Lebanon war were a period of mutual deterrence, also influenced by Hizballah’s deep involvement in the fighting in Syria. But they were also years of massive increase of Hizballah’s rocket and missile arsenal. Hizballah will come to the next confrontation with Israel far better prepared and more capable of bringing destruction to Israel’s cities. The lesson is clear: another round of fighting that does not put an end to the terrorists’ military capability means they will come back for more, better prepared than ever.

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.