Recently a Gazan mother of six was imprisoned for 23 days, and possibly tortured, by Hamas before being released. Meanwhile, Ahed Tamimi, a young West Bank Palestinian who was arrested after physically assaulting two IDF soldiers, is serving an eight-month sentence in an Israeli jail. Bassam Tawil contrasts the two cases:

Tamimi has, since [her arrest], become a symbol of the Palestinian “struggle” against Israel. She is glorified by many in the mainstream media in the West and by advocates of Palestinian human rights around the world, who have turned her into an icon. Tamimi has won all this fame and glory because she and her family members have long been staging skirmishes with Israeli soldiers in their village of Nabi Saleh. The teenager and her parents have made it a habit to invite journalists—or anyone carrying a camera—to document their provocative actions against the soldiers.

Abu Ghayyath, however, the woman from the Gaza Strip, has been less fortunate than the golden girl from the West Bank. Unlike Tamimi’s arrest, [hers] did not spark an international outcry. . . . Had Abu Ghayyath been arrested by Israel, her name would have appeared on the front pages of the New York Times and in the broadcasts of the BBC and CNN. The only ones who picked up her ordeal and demanded her release, however, were a few Palestinian women’s groups and, of course, her family. Predictably, only a handful of Palestinians—and no Westerners—dared to denounce Hamas for arresting the woman.

Even after Abu Ghayyath’s release, it remains unclear why Hamas’s security forces arrested her in the first place. Some Palestinians speculated that she could have been taken into custody because of her affiliation with Hamas’s rivals in Fatah, the secular faction headed by the Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmud Abbas. Others believe she may have been arrested because of her activities on behalf of women’s rights in the Gaza Strip.

This is yet another reminder of the dangerous double standard of the international community. Where are all those who claim to be “pro-Palestinian” and are spewing hatred against Israel and Jews on college campuses in the U.S. and Canada? If they really want to help the Palestinians, let them stand up and shout about the rights of women and gays living under Hamas’s repressive regime, and journalists who are being harassed and arrested by Mahmud Abbas’s security forces. Yelling lies about Israel and Jews does not make one “pro-Palestinian.” It only makes one an Israel-hater. Hating Israel does not [protect the] the human rights [of] Palestinians living under Hamas and Fatah. Instead, it serves as a distraction and even facilitates Fatah and Hamas in suppressing public freedoms and human rights.

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.