Since negotiations between the Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) collapsed in 2014, various studies have emerged to account for what happened and what went wrong. Michael Herzog, a retired Israeli general who has been involved in nearly every round of negotiations since 1993, contends that the talks made progress but failed for a number of reasons, among which Israeli settlement-building was far from the most important. Those reasons include the fact that Jerusalem got nothing of substance in return for releasing hundreds of imprisoned Palestinian terrorists, the misrepresentation of Israeli positions to the Palestinians by American go-betweens, and John Kerry’s insistence on “the titanic goal of reaching agreement on all core issues” within the too-short nine-month deadline imposed on the talks. But perhaps most salient were the attitudes of Palestinian leaders:

Israel insisted—with essential U.S. support—on explicitly stating that the final outcome of negotiations must be mutual recognition between two nation-states, including recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. . . . While Palestinian objections over this issue gave the impression of bargaining, these objections intensified with time to the point of them calling it a red line and publicly announcing their refusal even to discuss the matter in future negotiations. . . .

It seems Mahmoud Abbas . . . believed that the Palestinian side had already exhausted its ability to be flexible in past years and therefore that the main onus was not on him. He was increasingly disappointed when, after the U.S. side assumed active leadership of the substantive talks through the formal channel, discrepancies . . . emerged between what each of the parties was told by and expected from the U.S. mediators. When Israel [in reaction to the Palestinians walking away from their own preliminary commitments] delayed the release of the fourth [and final] tranche of prisoners, he told those around him: “If the U.S. can’t get Israel to release them, how can they get me Jerusalem?” Abbas could now add one more item to the long list of “no’s” he delivered to President Obama, about which he apparently prides himself. . . .

[Moreover], deep into the process [Abbas] was still oscillating among three strategies at the same time: negotiating with Israel and the United States, promoting statehood through the international community, and reconciling with Hamas. In his mind, they were not mutually exclusive. But in Israeli eyes, they were totally incompatible. Switching off among them cast doubt on his seriousness. Unfortunately, the U.S. did not put its full weight behind stopping this game, with one exception that proved the rule for Israel: when threatening to dissolve the PA (a fourth strategy raised in April), the Palestinians were confronted with a strong public rebuke from the U.S. side. The next day, four senior Palestinian officials denied they ever considered it.

Much as many ask whether Netanyahu possesses the will or the capacity to make the bold decisions necessary for peace, I have serious doubts about Abbas. They are supported by his record (including the way he avoided responding to Olmert’s offer in 2008) and his demeanor. Aging, losing domestic legitimacy and focused on his legacy, he is even less prone to taking such risks.

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.