On October 9, Nikki Haley announced that she would be stepping down from her position as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the end of the year. Ruthie Blum, taking stock of Haley’s time at Turtle Bay, judges that the former governor of South Carolina has lived up to the high standards set by her predecessors Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick, and suggests that “she has managed to rattle the midtown-Manhattan snake pit in a way that no one before her has.”

[Haley] not only served as a proud and fierce defender of American interests in the world, but did so in her own dignified and powerful voice. Indeed, she made the office her own. It is an accomplishment whose significance cannot be overstated. . . .

Unlike most people on their way out of a job, she did not slack off for a second. If anything, she upped her game. Her farewell speech at the monthly meeting of the UN Security Council on December 18 was just as memorable, if not more so, than her previous addresses. The gist of her words . . . was that the Palestinians have been abused by their leaders and misled by members of the international community.

The UN’s disproportionate obsession with Israel, she said, has “sent a loud and false message to the Palestinians that they just might be able to achieve their goals by relying on the UN, rather than through direct negotiations. And it has sent a loud and accurate message to the Israelis that they can never trust the UN. . . .

“As for the American people, we have demonstrated time and again our commitment to peace in the Middle East. We will continue to offer our hand in friendship to the Palestinian people, whom we have financially supported far more than any other country has. The Palestinians have everything to gain by engaging in peace negotiations. But . . . the world must know that America will remain steadfast in our support of Israel, its people, and its security. That is an unshakable bond between our two peoples. And it is that bond—more than anything else—that makes peace possible.”

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.