Israeli forces recently found and killed the head of the Hamas cell responsible for murdering Rabbi Raziel Shevach in January. To Ron Ben-Yishai this attack, unlike other recent stabbings and shooting, was the work of professional terrorists—and is thus a sign of a Hamas resurgence:

It was immediately clear that the [attack in January] was carried out by a professional, well-trained, and well-funded terror cell that carefully chose the location of the ambush, escape routes, and hiding places for after the attack. . . . What this means is that this was no “local resistance organization” or “lone-wolf attack” but rather the act of a well-entrenched terrorism infrastructure. . . . The difference between an organized terror infrastructure and local, popular terrorism is the amount of time required for its establishment, including “executioners,” collaborators to assist them, and a well-funded command center, probably located on land not directly under Israeli control. Also necessary are effective and secretive communications channels.

In the case of the [recently uncovered] Jarrar squad—headed by members of the Jarrar family—it is now known that its members carried out a number of terror attacks before Shevach’s murder. Despite those attacks, they managed to evade discovery by Israeli security forces. . . .

In general, the infrastructure of the Jarrar cell is reminiscent of Hamas’s organization during the second intifada. . . . For some years now, we have not witnessed such phenomena and infrastructure in the West Bank. This means that Hamas has finally succeeded in creating a competent terror infrastructure—unbeknownst to the IDF and Shin Bet—because they used clandestine methods typical of an established and proficient terror underground with a competent . . . command-and-control infrastructure.

The conclusion is that the Shin Bet and the IDF must now focus more intelligence and operational efforts toward thwarting established and sophisticated terrorism of the kind that existed during the second intifada until it was crushed in 2007.

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.