In addition to exposing the false claim that the violence at the Gaza border is about the “occupation” (which ended in 2005) or the Israeli blockade (which doesn’t apply to food, medical supplies, and other necessities), David Horovitz points to the self-declared purpose of the demonstrations: the “return” of Gazans to the towns and villages their ancestors left in 1948. The overall intent, writes Horovitz, is made clear by the very name, March of Return, which faithfully reflects the Palestinian insistence that all descendants of Arabs who fled the land of Israel, whether in 1948 or 1967, should be allowed to resettle in the areas they left—a policy that would destroy the state of Israel:

The “right” of “return,” demanded by Yasir Arafat and then by Mahmoud Abbas, has helped doom all efforts to date to negotiate a two-state solution. The assertion of a “right” of “return,” right now by Hamas, is bringing ever greater suffering to Gaza. The Palestinians’ unwavering insistence on a “right” of “return” has all but killed off belief inside Israel that a two-state solution can ever be attained.

The world owes it to the Palestinians to correct its definition of Palestinian “refugees”—and it can do so, incidentally, without in any way impacting any aid assistance it provides for Gaza and the West Bank.

It owes it to the Palestinians to make clear that Israel will not be required or pressured to commit national suicide as a Jewish state by absorbing millions of descendants of Palestinians who used to live in what is today’s Israel. Just as Israel, following the division of Mandatory Palestine by the UN in 1947 and independence in 1948, built a thriving state in its revived historic home, including by absorbing hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Middle Eastern and North African countries, so the Palestinians should be encouraged to build a thriving Palestinian state alongside and in true peace with Israel as the home to their millions—a first ever Palestinian state, in a framework that was spurned by the Arab world 70 years ago and that Arabs tragically continue to reject. . . .

Want to alleviate the ongoing tragedies of Gaza? Want to prevent the endless repetition of [horrors]? Make plain to the Palestinians that they have no “right” of “return.” Tell them that they deserve leadership that doesn’t lie to them and abuse them. And make it clear that their independence can be achieved only through a genuine readiness for coexistence, alongside majority-Jewish Israel.

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.