In the 1990s—following the Oslo Accords—Hamas launched lethally effective suicide bombings to murder Israelis; the attacks, which reached their bloody zenith during the second intifada, also took a toll on Israel’s economy. Since the suppression of the second intifada and the withdrawal from Gaza, the terrorist group has turned to rockets and mortars, then to tunnels, and now to setting fires in Israel by means of incendiary kites, balloons, and condoms. Hillel Frisch comments:

For all the feelings of terror engendered by the launching of over 14,000 missiles between 2004 and 2014 (a phenomenon that largely came to an end after the third bout between Hamas and Israel in the summer of 2014), missile terrorism was not nearly so [financially] costly to Israel as suicide bombing had been. . . . Missile terrorism was far less costly in human terms as well. Even if we take into account all the casualties of the three rounds of fighting between Israel and Hamas, mortalities add up to approximately 120—that is to say, less than one-third the number of Israelis who were killed during the wave of suicide bombings. Note also that the wave of missile terrorism took place over ten years, while the suicide-bombing wave lasted four.

Whereas the effectiveness of suicide terrorism was vastly reduced as a result of the military punishment meted out by the IDF and the Shin Bet, missile terrorism became less effective over time due to technological developments that denied Hamas much of the potency of this means of attack. [Likewise], Hamas concluded that tunnel attacks, initially considered a supplement to its arsenal, should become a substitute for missile strikes.

[But] just as missile terrorism was far less effective than suicide bombing, so too was tunnel terrorism less effective than both—before it was essentially foiled by technological developments. . . .

It is against the backdrop of its never-ending quest to find substitutes for no-longer-effective terrorist measures that Hamas’s innovation of kite terrorism can be understood. Though it is too early to say conclusively that this means is the poorest of all those that preceded it, it would seem [likely] that a solution will be found before it becomes lethal rather than simply destructive, as it is at present. Of course, a technological solution would be best, but, in its absence, some innovative combat moves against the perpetrators would be welcome.

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.