Despite the growing influence of Hamas, and despite living in neighborhoods that tend to get an unequal share of municipal resources, the Arabs of eastern Jerusalem express surprisingly encouraging attitudes toward Israel. According to recent surveys, 42 percent report feeling a sense of belonging in Israeli society, 43 percent recognize a historic connection between the Jewish people and the land, and 46 percent have a positive attitude toward the police. Nadav Shragai explains what Jerusalem can and should do to capitalize on this good will:

Many [of east Jerusalem’s Arabs] are undergoing a process of “Israelization,” not to say Westernization, and are becoming more and more like [Arab citizens of Israel living elsewhere in the country]. Some, dissatisfied with their permanent-residency status, are requesting Israeli citizenship, but this is granted sparingly.

Despite this, however, merely a few thousand of the 335,000 east-Jerusalem Arabs have voted in municipal elections for Jerusalem’s city council, even though they have the right to [do so]. Incidentally, far more east-Jerusalem residents would vote, and perhaps shape a list that . . . represents them in the municipality, had they not been terrorized by Fatah and Hamas. . . .

But this time things can be different. . . . As Jews and Israelis, we shouldn’t be afraid of this change. If voters and political lists from east-Jerusalem were to participate actively in local elections, it would be a welcome thing. Jerusalem is a binational city, and that is not going to change anytime soon. . . .

Israel needs to create the conditions for them to participate in truly free elections. They will not come to the ballots if they fear being shot on the way, or having their cars torched. The police and the Shin Bet security agency, for their part, must enable the Arabs to vote without fear. Technology can also be used to this end: in the 21st century, it is possible to vote using a computer, even from home or from the workplace. Even those who fear east-Jerusalem Arabs influencing national Jewish interests in Jerusalem should not be afraid of striking a true partnership with them.

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.