When Hamas began carrying out suicide bombings in the 1990s, Israeli security forces confronted what was then a relatively new tactic. The Shin Bet soon focused its attention on Yahya Ayyash, Hamas’s chief bomb maker, who had been involved in planning most of the attacks. Avi Dichter, then head of the Shin Bet’s southern division, directed the operation that culminated in Ayyash’s assassination; it involved locating the terrorist in Gaza’s refugee camps, infiltrating his inner circle, and then placing a miniature bomb into his cell phone. Reporting on a recent interview with Dichter, now a member of the Knesset, Yaakov Katz writes:

Almost 21 years later, Ayyash’s assassination continues to reverberate throughout Israel and the Gaza Strip. Not just because it was one of the first examples of how Israel was adapting to the new threat of suicide bombers, but because the skills honed then by the IDF and the Shin Bet continue to serve the country today in its never-ending war on terrorism. . . .

Dichter is of the opinion that terrorism can be defeated. When he was head of the Shin Bet, he famously said that “terrorism is like a barrel that has a bottom,” meaning that it has an end. While terrorism has dissipated in the years since, it has not completely disappeared. Nevertheless, Dichter remains confident that he was right.

But for that to happen, Israel—or any other country, for that matter—can never let up its fight. It is a constant battle that never ends. . . . A constant hunt for terrorists, he explained, forces the wanted men and women to reorganize their lives: “That is what we did during operation Defensive Shield, [which ended the second intifada in 2002]. Until then, terrorists were using 95 percent of their time to engage in terrorism and 5 percent to hide. The operation made it the opposite.” . . .

[Furthermore], according to Dichter, Israel can’t gamble with its security by withdrawing, for example, from strategic places like the Jordan Valley or the Golan Heights. “The debate about the Jordan Valley is over,” he said. “We need to understand that what happened over the last six years—an Arab earthquake that no one foresaw—means that we can’t take risks that will undermine our ability to be prepared for surprises and scenarios looming on the horizon.”

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.