When it comes to the Middle East, Beijing’s primary goal seems to be its “Belt and Road Initiative,” which involves establishing trade routes to Europe by land and sea. China also maintains good relations, including robust trade, with the Jewish state. But Ehud Yaari, having just completed a series of meetings with important Chinese military, diplomatic, and academic figures, points out that Beijing’s diplomatic strategy of neutrality actually leads to positions inimical to Israel:

China . . . steers clear of taking sides in the Iran-Saudi Arabia showdown or intra-Arab disputes such as the [the Saudi and Emirati] embargo of Qatar, preferring to deal with the Arab League as its main address for dialogue. This includes consistently supporting the league’s positions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

One of China’s voting habits at the UN is to back all anti-Israel resolutions. Beijing is fully aware that Gulf governments are quietly pursuing cooperation with the Israeli government on several fronts, but so long as their formal public stance remains frosty, China will keep voting accordingly.

The Chinese government does not facilitate the entry of Israeli exports to China; mutual trade reached $14 billion last year, but most of the Israeli sales were made by Intel plants. Chinese companies have acquired some major Israeli firms (mainly in the chemical and dairy sectors) and won tenders to manage new sections of Haifa and Ashdod ports, but Israeli regulators have prevented their entry into the cyber and insurance sectors; the latter is significant because China has sought access to data about Israeli security personnel via pension programs.

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.