Thus argues Michael Koplow:

The political pressure that the king [of Jordan] faces to cut ties with Israel any time there are rumors that Israel is threatening al-Aqsa puts him in a bind where he is forced to take self-defeating measures, so his priority is generally to work out a solution that makes the problem go away without endangering the Israeli-Jordanian relationship. The [recent] case has been no different. . . . But [King Abdullah’s judiciousness] really shone through following the attack on the Israeli security guard in the Israeli embassy compound in Amman, and the guard’s subsequent shooting of his attacker and another Jordanian bystander.

The . . . facts in this case matter less than the optics; what ordinary Jordanians saw was that an Israeli shot and killed two Jordanians, and Israel demanded to bring him home without having to face an investigation . . . in Jordan. One might imagine how this could have quickly spiraled out of control. Instead, Israel and Jordan were able to come to an agreement that brought the embassy guard home and ended the crisis, and to the extent that the quid pro quo was trading the guard for the metal detectors—something that seems to have obviously happened but that has been denied by both sides—it allowed both sides to de-escalate things. . . .

This does not mean that King Abdullah is perfect or that Jordan bears zero responsibility. . . . Jordan could have done more in the past and should do more going forward to make sure that the Islamic Waqf [the Jordan-controlled body responsible for the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem] does not allow weapons to be smuggled onto the Temple Mount and prevents violence.

The contrast to the behavior of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is striking. Koplow continues:

Erdogan . . . is doing everything in his power not only to try to use the Temple Mount for his own narrow political gain, but to supplant Jordan’s role in Jerusalem entirely. . . . The Turkish government has been paying to bus protestors to the Temple Mount from around the country, and pictures have circulated on social media in the last two weeks of Muslim protestors around the site waving Turkish flags. . . .

Erdogan is not alone in pouring gasoline on the flames. Mahmoud Abbas deserves an entire column of his own detailing his irresponsibility in nearly every aspect of this drama, including his continuing dissembling over alleged threats to the Temple Mount status quo and his shockingly irresponsible and dangerous invitation to the Tanzim militia to lead mass protests [last] Friday. Any violence that occurs as a result should be laid directly at Abbas’s feet.

But Abbas is acting defensively out of cowardice and fear over what his political rivals will say; what makes Erdogan’s behavior more odious is that he is actively inflaming passions and inciting against Israel simply to make himself look better and boost his standing.

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.