In an interview with Bret Stephens published in the New York Times on January 11, the outgoing IDF chief-of-staff Gadi Eisenkot stated bluntly that Israel had struck “thousands” of Iranian targets in Syria in recent years. The same day, Benjamin Netanyahu made a similar on-the-record statement at cabinet meeting. These admissions mark a break from Jerusalem’s longstanding reluctance to claim responsibility for airstrikes it has carried out in the midst of the Syrian civil war—a policy that dates back even earlier, to such events as the destruction of a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. Eyal Zisser explains the rationale behind breaking with this policy of “strategic ambiguity”:

More than anything, a policy of silence helps keep the enemy in the dark about how exposed and vulnerable it is to Israeli operational and intelligence-gathering capabilities. Silence also . . . allows [Syria and Iran] to save face—as any direct Israeli claims of responsibility would force them into a corner and compel them to retaliate. [Nonetheless], there was never much ambiguity in the true sense of the word. . . . [T]he people on the other side of the border certainly have no doubts about what is going on. Even without official claims of responsibility, our neighbors never thought these attacks were the work of anyone else. A long line of defense ministers and generals have a history of intimating—and sometimes stating outright—that Israel has been responsible.

It is ridiculous, therefore, to argue, [as some have done], that the recent claims of responsibility in Israel specifically prodded the Iranians to escalate their own response against Israel [as in a barrage of missiles aimed at the Golan Heights last week]. After all, in Tehran and Damascus alike, policy isn’t determined by headlines in Israel, [but ultimately by] the reality on the ground.

And on the ground, Israel has indeed managed to delay and even block Tehran’s efforts to establish a military foothold in Syria. As this is a paramount Iranian strategic interest, Tehran is determined to change the rules of the game, especially now that the war in Syria is almost over and Israeli-Russian relations aren’t as warm as they used to be. The time has come to dispense with ambiguity, which never really existed in the first place, and replace it with clear declarations that highlight Israel’s red lines vis-à-vis Tehran.

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.