Reviewing a recent study of Pyongyang’s involvement in the Middle East, Jack May explains the serious dangers the Communist regime poses to the Jewish state, especially through its close alliance with Iran:

North Korea can facilitate Iran’s aspirations for nuclear weapons. Missile cooperation between the two countries goes back to the Iran-Iraq war, when North Korea assisted in the development of the Iranian Shahab-1 missiles. . . . The [2015 nuclear] deal with Iran has reinvigorated their relationship. It has not curbed Iranian nuclear ambitions; the Iranian foreign minister warned recently that Tehran is “completely ready” to restart its nuclear program if the U.S. fails to meet its commitments. . . . [W]orrying loopholes in the deal allow Iran to develop its nuclear program externally, with a likelihood of North Korea being its nuclear “backdoor.” Moreover, it appears Iran can use the $100 billion provided by lifted sanctions to fund this endeavor. . . .

[In addition], Iran has previously tweaked North Korean ballistic missiles to bear nuclear warheads. It seems the Iranian assurance that it does not envisage nuclear applications for its missiles should be viewed with skepticism, particularly as new reports indicate North Korea could provide Iran with the materials to miniaturize nuclear warheads for use on ballistic missiles, following attempts to sell a form of lithium metal used for this purpose on the international market. . . .

North Korean weaponry [also] provides Hizballah and Hamas with the military capability to strike Israel. In 2014 a U.S. federal judge ruled that North Korea was legally accountable to victims of the 2006 Second Lebanon War because of the “advanced weapons, expert advice, and construction assistance” it provided to Hizballah. During 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, Hamas tried to negotiate an arms deal with North Korea worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hizballah has received training in North Korea, and technical assistance is suspected in the construction of Hamas’s Gaza tunnel network.

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.