While Palestinian schools in east Jerusalem uniformly receive funding from the Israeli government, only 10 percent of them offer the Israeli curriculum; instead, most employ the one produced by the PA. Both the Israeli government and many Palestinians would like to see this change, writes Ruthie Blum:

While the PA continually poisons the minds of young Arabs with jihad against Jews, Christians, and other infidels, Israel has been trying to meet a growing and openly expressed need among Palestinian students in its capital city. . . .

A recent news feature on one of Israel’s television networks included a visit to a Palestinian high school in east Jerusalem in which the pupils are given a choice of whether to study and be tested on Israel’s core curriculum or that of the PA. A show of hands in the classroom indicated that most had decided to go with the former, so as to be prepared for the Israeli matriculation exams. One teenager said he wanted to attend medical school; another said he wanted to become an engineer; others gave similar answers. Those who opted to stick with the Palestinian curriculum . . . shrugged when asked about their ambitions in life. . . .

It is for this reason that the Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Ministry is going to provide a special 20-million-shekel ($5.2 million) bonus to the schools already offering the Israeli curriculum and to incentivize others to follow suit. The money will go toward improving the physical conditions of the schools and building extra facilities, such as computer rooms and gyms. . . . [T]he PA considers [this initiative] an outrage. . . .

To prevent Israel from helping Palestinian students get ahead, the PA is calling on Arab and Islamic NGOs to raise money for the purpose of “thwarting Israeli attempts to Judaize Palestinian schools.”

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.