According to a recent study, 67 percent of those who committed or attempted lone-wolf terrorist attacks in Israel over the last few years had a history of mental illness. One of them was a young Israeli Arab named Ahmed Mohammad Hamid, who had spent time in a mental institution and was recently killed in his attempt to stab a police officer. The researchers, led by the psychologist Ariel Merari, also conducted interviews with people imprisoned by Israel for acts of terror; these bolstered the evidence that suicidal tendencies, mental illness, and personal problems are linked to terrorism. But do the findings suggest that there is no connection between terrorism and anti-Israel ideology? Quite the contrary, writes Nadav Shragai:

Like many other attackers suffering personal distress, some of whom were psychotic or were part of the troubled fringes of Palestinian society, Hamid will soon be getting a status upgrade. He will be moved from . . . the rejected end of the Palestinian [social] spectrum and given a place of honor in the pantheon of Palestinian ethno-religious martyrs. His wild, incitement-filled funeral . . . was just the first sign that the process has begun.

Merari said the sample revealed that family troubles were much more likely to motivate women to commit a terrorist attack than to motivate men. Security officials recount stories of women who took to terrorism because they were being forced to marry against their will, or because their husbands were divorcing them and trying to take their children, and even one case of a female attacker who approached a security guard at a West Bank checkpoint and asked him to shoot her. . . .

“Muslims,” [said Merari], “like Jews or Catholics, are not allowed to commit suicide. A Muslim who commits suicide is destined to eternal hell. Dying while carrying out a terrorist attack, [however], is not only not forbidden, it is recommended by many [religious authorities]. For someone who wants to die, this is a religiously legitimate way.”

[Furthermore, he continued] “there is no doubt synergy with the public and social atmosphere. This is where the hard-core incitement comes in [as well as] the copycat element. . . . When a woman with difficult family problems wants to die, for totally personal reasons, the first thing that occurs to her is, ‘I’ll go kill an Israeli soldier, and then I’ll have social legitimacy. Society will see me positively.’ The daily reporting of these incidents in the Palestinian media and the legitimacy they are given there guides a potential suicide terrorist to choose this manner of death.”

In addition to these extreme cases, writes Shragai, a number of attackers see “martyrdom” as a way to redeem themselves after somehow bringing shame to their families, especially as they know their relatives will benefit financially from their deaths.

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.