When Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies severed relations with Doha last week, they cited as their key grievances the small but wealthy emirate’s support for terrorist groups and its coziness with Iran. Although the friendliness toward Iran is real, Qatar also supports anti-Iranian forces in Yemen and Syria. The real issue, argues Eran Lerman, is the struggle between what he calls the “camp of stability”—the pro-American Sunni Arab states led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt—and the Muslim Brotherhood, affiliates of which control Gaza, Turkey, and part of Libya, are gaining ground in Syria, and receive support from Doha in the form of funds, arms, and the constant propaganda disseminated by the Al Jazeera news network. Lerman suggests Israel and America have a stake in this quarrel:

With the collapse of Islamic State (IS) in both Mosul and Raqqa now within sight, it is all the more important to ensure that the Muslim Brotherhood and its regional allies not be in a position to benefit on the ground. The best outcome—for both the U.S., which still relies on Qatar’s huge Udayd air force base, and for Israel, given that it is mainly Qatari money that now keeps Gaza from descending into a humanitarian disaster (and possibly another round of violence)—would be for Qatar truly to change course. This would entail permanently shutting down all support for terror infrastructures while maintaining a commitment to humanitarian needs. Given Qatar’s vulnerabilities, such a goal may well be within reach. . . .

Once IS is obliterated and the so-called caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is subjected to typical Iraqi retirement benefits, the main question in both Syria and Iraq will be this: will the Iranian camp be able to consolidate a contiguous corridor under its control from Iran to the Mediterranean, or will the forces of stability, with Jordan in a highly sensitive role, be able to prevent this from happening? The prospect of decisive struggles ahead is one more reason for the Saudi-led camp to shore up its position by reducing the room for maneuver hitherto enjoyed by some of its rivals in the Sunni Arab world.

Moreover, the ground is shifting, regionally and globally, on the question of support for terrorist groups. There has never been any doubt that Qatari largesse often ended up, deliberately or as the result of loose controls, in the wrong hands. Against the background of the horrors in Manchester and London, the pride taken in butchering children, the overall level of tolerance for terrorists of any color—including Hamas—is now near zero. . . .

This robust power play by America’s allies (who are also Israel’s partners in the camp of stability, broadly defined) poses challenges as well as strategic benefits.

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.