Ten years after the second Lebanon war, there remains a widespread perception in Israel that it was a failure—a perception bolstered both by Hizballah leaders’ subsequent declarations of victory and by the Knesset’s Winograd commission, which found numerous failings on the part of both the IDF and the Olmert government. However, argues Yaakov Amidror, the war was in many ways a success:

This notorious campaign . . . has given Israel unprecedented calm on the northern border. [But] the media . . . evaluated the campaign’s success according to its own expectations rather than according to the campaign’s effect on the enemy. . . .

As it turns out, the Israel Defense Forces inflicted massive damage on Hizballah. [Its leader, Sheikh Hassan] Nasrallah, found himself in a highly precarious situation in which his men were a hair’s breadth from their breaking point. . . .

[Israelis’] criticism of the military was justified, but as Nasrallah learned the hard way, the IDF has the upper hand in any clash with Hizballah. Nasrallah understood he was on the verge of a crushing defeat, one he could not spin into a “divine victory.” The crippling blows Hizballah suffered, particularly at the hands of the Israel Air Force, also explain why the Shiite terrorist group has been focusing considerable effort on building up its air defenses.

The second reason for the misperception is that Israeli pundits failed to account for Iranian interests. Iran formed Hizballah as its regional proxy, a long strategic arm to be used to generate deterrence and retaliate for major events. And there the group was, wasting its resources on a minor move like the abduction of two Israeli soldiers, for which it was made to pay dearly. Already anxious about its strategic asset, Iran responded to Hizballah’s gambit by deciding it needed to supervise the group far more strictly. . . . So, following the 2006 campaign, Iran imposed restrictions on Hizballah’s aggression.

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.