On May 9, the head of one of the many Tehran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq gave a speech accusing Israel of support for Islamic State and, moreover, threatened that once his group and its allies had vanquished their Sunni enemies, they would turn to the task of destroying the Jewish state. These threats, writes Jonathan Spyer, should not be taken as mere bluster, especially amidst the rising tensions in the Persian Gulf:

[T]he area encompassing Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon today constitutes a single arena from an Iranian operational point of view. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) [and its proxies] have freedom of action in each of these areas. . . .

Iran is making use of its Iraqi militia clients to deploy short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) in the deserts of western Iraq—with the intention that these could be launched against Israel at a time of Iran’s choosing. . . . Tehran has also established facilities for missile production in western Iraq, and is employing Iraqi citizens to carry out this work. . . .

The ability of Iran to operate a de-facto contiguous line of control across Iraq, and thence to Syria, Lebanon, and the borders with the Golan Heights, is thus not under serious doubt. It appears that Tehran has begun to station SRBMs along this route, directed at Israel, and manned by the IRGC-directed militias—an arrangement intended to provide Iran with deniability in the event of their being used. . . . In the remote deserts of western Iraq, Iran’s servants are busily at work preparing a new front against Israel.

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.