In an interview on Monday, Jared Kushner dropped some hints about the plan for resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict that the U.S. government intends to reveal in April. Khaled Abu Toameh notes that, since the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas has already made clear that he will reject the proposal—which he has termed “the slap of the century”—what Israelis think of it is hardly consequential:

Palestinian leaders have incited their people against President Trump and his advisers to the point where it would be almost impossible for them even to be seen meeting with a U.S. official. In recent months, Abbas has been quoted as saying that he does not intend to end his life as a “traitor.” The comment . . . means that it would also be impossible to accept any peace plan presented by the current administration.

Anyone who thinks that the Palestinians may change their mind about [what Donald Trump has called] the “deal of the century” . . . is living in an illusion. There is no reason why Abbas should not be taken seriously when he says he does not intend to end his life as a “traitor.” One has to give him credit for at least being honest. He is all too aware that the moment he accepts the “deal of the century,” he would go down in history and in the eyes of Palestinians—as well as many Arabs—as having sold them out, and, of all people, to the “colonizers.”. . .

Arab foreign ministers who attended the recent U.S.-sponsored conference in Poland on peace and security in the Middle East are now facing strong condemnations from many Arabs . . . for appearing in public with Benjamin Netanyahu [at the conference]. . . . They are being accused by Arabs of promoting normalization with the “Zionist enemy.” . . .

Under [such] circumstances, when Arabs are being widely shamed and condemned for sitting in the same room with an Israeli prime minister, it is hard to see how the Trump administration will be able to convince Arab states and leaders to normalize their relations with Israel. Some of these Arab leaders may be privately telling White House officials things they like to hear about peace and coexistence with Israel. The very same leaders, however, are fully aware of the opposite sentiments, not only in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but throughout the Arab world.

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.