On Thursday, a Palestinian terrorist, apparently affiliated with Hamas, raped and murdered nineteen-year-old Ori Ansbacher in the woods outside Jerusalem. Ben-Dror Yemini notes the absurdity of blaming his actions on “the occupation.”

We have always been told that, for as long as the Israeli occupation continues, Palestinian terror will not end. . . . In order to uproot it, [therefore], one has to give the Palestinians hope, and remove all cause for them to resort to terrorist activity. This thesis of “terrorism caused by occupation” is supported by many—too many, one might say. Not all of them are even anti-Semites or anti-Zionists; some are good people, who actually believe this nonsense.

Sometimes, there is indeed a connection between terror and a struggle for liberation. This is not the case when it comes to Palestinian terrorism, which in recent decades has evolved, practically speaking, into jihadist terrorism. These murderers were not born murderers, but the brainwashing, the incitement, and the overall environment has turned them into murderers.

During the week in which Ori Ansbacher was murdered, some 186 people were killed by jihadists elsewhere in the world. Since the start of 2019, 712 people have been murdered, while 2018 saw some 11,769 jihadist killings. The majority of these terror acts did not actually make international headlines, because they occurred in Asia and Africa—Congo, Chad, Somalia, Nigeria, Kenya, and many other places. That’s in addition to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria, where jihadist murders are carried out daily. The majority of the victims in these attacks are Muslims, and their sins are unclear. . . .

Ansbacher was killed because her murderer originates from a community where many sanctify death and hatred. She was killed because the highest religious official in the Palestinian Authority, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, regularly calls for the murder of Jews. She was killed because the environment that encourages murder is sustained by Palestinian Authority’s monthly salary payments to terrorists.

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.