Last week, three Israeli Arabs on a beach near Haifa were attacked and severely beaten by a group of Israeli Jews armed with clubs and knives and shouting ethnic slurs; the incident ended when passersby intervened. Police have arrested two suspects thus far. Ben-Dror Yemini cautions against joining what Salman Rushdie termed the “but brigade”—those who immediately follow condemnations of acts of terror with the word “but,” followed by justifications and rationalizations:

[A]nyone who condemns, but then immediately moves to “but,” is not really condemning—he’s supporting. This is exactly the story of those in the gray area between “understanding” and “justifying” terror attacks against Jews, and this is exactly where we must not be when dealing with Jewish terrorists. There is also no need for generalizations. The fact that hundreds shouted “in blood and fire we’ll save Palestine” at the funeral of Ahmad Mohammad Hamid, [the Israeli Arab killed while trying to stab a police officer], doesn’t turn all Israeli Arabs into supporters of murder and terrorism. And the fact that among the Jewish public there are a few who carry out abominable acts, or support them, doesn’t turn Israel into a racist and inciting state.

There is official incitement from the Palestinian Authority against Israelis and Jews. Here and there, there is also incitement against Arabs in Israel. But comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges. Palestinian terrorism is the result of incitement. The fact that Jewish terrorism—such as the murder of the Arab teen Mohammed Abu Khdeir [in 2014]—is a rare, very rare occurrence is the result of the lack of incitement. . . .

[T]he fact that inside Israel there is Arab violence against Jews—even if it’s a rare occurrence—does not justify leniency when it comes to violence against Arabs. The violence must be eradicated with a firm hand. No forgiveness. No understanding. And if the punishment of Jewish hooligans is lesser by even an inch than the punishment of Arab hooligans under similar circumstances—that would be racism and the encouragement of violence.

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.