Responding to the hue and cry in the wake of Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement in which the term “ethnic cleansing” was used to describe the Palestinian Authority’s aspirations for the West Bank, Moshe Arens writes:

[E]thnic cleansing is being carried out at this moment in parts of Iraq and Syria. Shiites are getting rid of Sunnis and Sunnis are getting rid of Shiites, and both are getting rid of Christians.

So why did Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent use of that phrase cause such an uproar? Is it because he referred to Judea and Samaria, a territory that the proponents of the “two-state” solution envisage as part of the future Palestinian state? . . . [S]ome people claim that the settlements [there] are illegal and constitute an obstacle to peace, . . . based on the assumption that this area should be reserved for the establishment of a Palestinian state, and this state should be a homogeneous Arab state. [But] it can’t be argued that the removal of the Jews there would not be an act of ethnic cleansing.

Underlying the opposition of many who object to Jewish settlements in the area is the assumption that Jews and Arabs cannot live peaceably together and should therefore be separated. . . . [Everyone involved in this discussion needs] to be reminded of the obvious—that Jews and Arabs are living peaceably together in the state of Israel, and if ever a Palestinian state were to be established existing side by side with Israel in peace, there is no reason it shouldn’t contain a Jewish minority.

As a matter of fact, such a minority might actually prove an economic asset to that state. So what’s all the fuss about?

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.