Amid the escalation of hostilities between Israel and Gaza in November, Hamas threatened to target Ben-Gurion airport with its rockets; Israeli authorities responded by rerouting some flights without causing any serious disruption to business as usual. But earlier, during the brief 2014 war, when a rocket from Gaza landed a mile from the airport, the Obama administration quickly suspended U.S. flights to Israel for a few days and the EU just as quickly followed suit. Raphael Bouchnik-Chen comments:

Hamas learned [in 2014] that it can leverage flight restrictions to its advantage, even if only as a propaganda factor. If it so much as mentions Ben-Gurion airport in the context of potential retaliation targets, Israel has to take notice and will therefore be deterred.

Technically speaking, Hamas missiles and rockets are indeed capable of reaching a radius beyond 70 km, potentially threatening much of Israel, [the airport included]. This was demonstrated in 2014, though most of the missiles and rockets fired toward Tel Aviv were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome. Still, it is rational to wonder whether this hazard turned out to be a critical factor that caused Israeli decision-makers to advocate for military restraint [last month, despite] Hamas’s provocations. . . .

In practical terms, the flight bans imposed in 2014 . . . were drastically and needlessly overdramatic. . . . The double standard put on display during these events was manifested once again very recently, when ballistic-missile barrages were launched on an almost daily basis by the Yemenite Houthi rebels toward several Saudi main airports. No flight prohibitions were even considered in light of these attacks. . . .

The flight prohibition enforced on Ben-Gurion Airport in 2014 was a form of political pressure exerted on Israel by the Obama administration to stop the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, not a reflection of genuine safety concerns. This suggests that Hamas’s threats to “close the Israeli sky” are little more than mere propaganda.

Unfortunately, if American or European governments want to punish or pressure Jerusalem, they can follow President Obama’s example and use Hamas’s threats as a pretext.

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.