A terrorist attack at the Temple Mount last month led Israel to install metal detectors and other security measures at the site, which in turn led to Palestinian demonstrations and rioting, which died down after Israel removed the metal detectors. The initial incident, writes Yossi Kuperwasser, was the first “in many years” that “involved a relatively extensive organization that planned a very complex operation at the most sensitive spot.” To Kuperwasser, the entire episode played in to Mahmoud Abbas’s hands:

Through his formal control of the religious establishment in Jerusalem, Abbas made use of the Mufti Muhammad Hussein (whom he himself appointed) to dictate the nature of the struggle [against the metal detectors] and set the conditions for ending it. It was Abbas who decided that the struggle would be the “popular resistance” he favors, meaning it would mainly involve prayers and demonstrations with limited violence and without firearms. Abbas deployed protestors and ostensibly punitive measures against Israel such as [purportedly] halting security coordination and civilian contacts.

It was also he who insisted that Israel remove all the security devices [at the Mount] and did not settle for Jordan’s achievement in getting only the metal detectors removed. And it was Abbas who, after he got Israel to accept his terms, stood at the mufti’s side while he announced that prayer on the Temple Mount had resumed.

Abbas saw Israel’s capitulation in revoking the security measures as a morale-booster for the Palestinians and as a great personal achievement. He has hastened to translate it into several operational goals: stepped-up pressure on Hamas; a change for the better in his public status, among other things by hosting [Jordan’s] King Abdullah in Ramallah and convening the Palestinian National Council as a show of support for his leadership; an attempt to extract further gains from Israel by posing additional conditions for renewing security coordination; and an easing of the American pressure, while criticizing the new administration for its conduct toward the Palestinians thus far. . . .

The Palestinians are caught up in a sense of achievement, which inspires them to harden their positions. . . . Such an atmosphere does not encourage a Palestinian willingness to renew negotiations without prior conditions.

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.