In the face of massive Palestinian protests, Israel this week agreed to remove the metal detectors that it installed at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem after the terrorist murder there of two Israeli policemen. The episode, Martin Kramer writes,

has raised the question of just what constitutes legitimate security measures at Islamic holy shrines and iconic mosques. We live in a time when the primary threat to the security of these sites arises from Muslims themselves—notably, extremists bent on using them as launching pads for violent acts designed to destabilize and terrorize. Across the Muslim world, governments are acutely aware of the vulnerabilities of these sites, and have taken measures to secure them. In particular, they have resorted to a commonplace technology: metal detectors.

Here I provide some prime examples from Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates. . . . Off we go on a quick tour—with photographs—of Islam’s bucket list of top sites. Please place your keys and camera in the basket.

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.