Urging his fellow Africans to eschew the “victim mentality” of blaming their countries’ woes on the depredations of European colonialism, Ibitoye Olukosi suggests they look to Zionism for inspiration:

Africans are not the only people who have had to pass through a phase where they were dehumanized, humiliated, spat on, raped, killed like animals, and dispersed across the globe. At various points in Jewish history, Jews were driven from their original homes, scattered abroad, and almost wiped out in a Holocaust conducted by Nazi Germany, until they gradually went back to Israel and [created a state there in] 1948. . . .

Israel was more or less a “desert” when the Jews [returned en masse]. But today, it has been transformed into an indispensable country, visited by citizens of many other nations for religious tourism and academic exchange programs. Similarly, many countries now rely on, and partner with, Israel in science, technology, military, trade, and security. No doubt, this is a miracle considering [how] Jews were treated . . . in Europe and elsewhere 71 years ago.

Moreover, the Jews did not delay their progress by blaming Hitler for killing over six million of their kind; nor did they blame anyone for their having to live in exile for more than 1,000 years; rather, they put the awful experiences behind them, rolled up their sleeves, and rebuilt themselves and their country. I am very sure that Israel would be at the mercy of its hostile neighbors or Western allies today should they have held on to the victim mentality.

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.