The Egyptian minister of antiquities recently announced that President Sisi had allocated over $70 million for restoring and preserving Jewish sites in the country. Last month, Sisi stated that Egypt should build Jewish houses of worship. Currently only a handful of Jews remain in the country, home to one of the oldest diaspora communities; most Egyptian Jews were driven out during the 1950s and 60s amidst severe persecution. Haisam Hassanein comments:

On December 6, Khaled Salah, the editor-in-chief of al-Youm al-Sabaa—a news outlet with close ties to Egypt’s security services—tweeted praise for Hanukkah, calling it a victory for monotheism against “paganism” and advising his audience to read about the Jewish festival’s central historical figure, Judah Maccabee. This coincided with the first public Hanukkah celebration in decades at the Shaar Hashamayim synagogue in Cairo, attended by members of Egypt’s tiny Jewish community alongside an American delegation. . . .

Three motivations best explain the government’s positive discourse [regarding] Jews: [Egypt] sees American Jewish citizens and organizations as a gateway to U.S. policymakers, whom they perceive as overtly sympathetic to Jewish causes; . . . officials seem to believe that investing more money in restoring Jewish heritage will help market the country as a destination for global Jewish tourism; [and] the president’s advisers may be trying to burnish his image as a tolerant leader [worthy of staying in power]. . . .

Yet taking a friendly approach toward Jews and Israel also raises several challenges for Sisi. Historically, Islam has regarded Jews as a protected and tolerated religious minority with some civil and religious rights, but without political status. Hence, most traditional Muslims in Egypt have trouble comprehending or accepting the idea of a Jewish state, Jewish army, or Jewish political community. . . . Even those Egyptians who agree with Sisi’s attitude toward Jews would still have trouble accepting the idea of a neighboring Zionist state. . . .

Washington should continue encouraging Cairo to press Egyptian religious institutions to moderate their discourse [about Jews]. . . . At the same time, Sisi’s latest measures should not give Washington any illusions that he has become a . . . tolerant ruler.

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.