In the Six-Day War, the Jewish state established itself as the preeminent military power in the Middle East. Michael Mandelbaum argues that by doing so, Israel proved indispensable to Washington’s grand strategy, which required maintaining a balance of power in the region:

Unlike in Europe and East Asia, to maintain an acceptable balance of power the United States did not need to station American forces on the territory of its allies. Israeli military supremacy helped to make a major American military presence on the ground unnecessary, and thus reduced the cost of American foreign policy. Indeed, Israel was and remains the only democratic ally of the United States that does not seek direct American military protection. In the Middle East, America could, therefore, act as what the British historically preferred to be in Europe: an “offshore balancer.” . . .

The role of Israel’s post-1967 military supremacy in keeping at bay would-be challengers to the status quo of the Middle East has received less notice than it deserves, in no small part because of its very nature: it has usually operated invisibly, deterring attacks rather than repulsing them. There have been exceptions to this pattern. The explicit threat of Israeli military intervention in September 1970 helped to stop a Syrian assault on an important Arab ally of the United States, the Kingdom of Jordan. For the most part, however, Israeli military prowess worked to America’s advantage by suppressing initiatives that Middle Eastern countries hostile to both Israel and the United States might otherwise have taken.

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.