As a candidate for Jerusalem’s city council, Ramadan Dabash hopes his fellow Arab Jerusalemites—who have the right to vote in municipal elections regardless of whether they are citizens of Israel—will come to the polls in October. Most years, however, only a tiny number do so, in part because of pressure and even intimidation from Palestinian religious and lay leaders. And this pressure comes not only from Hamas but from such senior Palestinian Authority figures as Saeb Erekat, who recently stated that any Arab who votes in the elections will be “assisting” in Israeli “ethnic cleansing.” Bassam Tawil comments:

The Palestinian campaign of incitement against participation in the municipal election reached its peak recently with the publication of a fatwa (Islamic religious decree) that bans Muslims from talking part in the vote. The fatwa [effectively tells] the Muslim residents of Jerusalem that any among them who dares to seek improved municipal services for himself and his family would be considered an infidel. This is a direct call on extremists to target Dabash and people like him [with violence]. . . .

Palestinian leaders have once again shown that they do not hesitate to act against the interests of their own people. The call for boycotting the municipal election in Jerusalem should be seen in the context of continued Palestinian incitement against Israel. Moreover, the call should also be seen in the context of the Palestinian Authority’s campaign of intimidation and threats against its own people.

Contrary to the Palestinian leadership’s claim, Arab participation in the municipal election does not come with any political implication. The Arabs who are taking part in the election are not being asked to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Nor are they being required to swear allegiance to Israel.

Palestinian leaders and their religious clerics do not want to see Arabs live a comfortable life under Israel. They are afraid that the world would see that Arabs can have a good life under Israeli sovereignty. They are also afraid that Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip will start envying the Arabs living in Israel—and then demand similar conditions from their leaders.

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.