In 2007, having been presented with evidence that Syria was building a nuclear reactor in the town of al-Kibar, President George W. Bush told the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert that not only would the U.S. not take action, but he expected Jerusalem to show restraint. Olmert nonetheless ordered the daring air raid that destroyed the site. In his book on the episode, Yaakov Katz notes that, after learning of the operation, Bush did not reprimand Olmert but instead offered his support in the event of a Syrian response. Michael Doran writes in his review:

In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin chose to attack the Osirak reactor in Iraq without consulting the Americans at all. The operation was a resounding success, but the Reagan administration lashed out in anger. It stopped the delivery of four F-16 aircraft to Israel and supported a UN Security Council resolution that labeled the attack a “clear violation” of both the UN Charter and international norms. Unfazed, Begin praised the operation as “a precedent for every future government in Israel.”

Olmert recognized the force of the precedent—but with a twist. Keeping the Americans informed every step of the way, he gave future Israeli leaders an additional model of alliance maintenance. . . . Although the bet that Olmert placed on Bush [in warning him beforehand] entailed some risks, he always held a trump card up his sleeve: the IDF. Olmert was confident from the outset that even if the Americans would oppose military action, Israel still possessed the tools to get the job done.

One of Olmert’s colleagues, Katz reports, . . . the air-force commander Major General Eliezer Shkedi, had distributed a dramatic photo to countless Israeli soldiers and airmen. The photo captures the moment when three Israeli F-15s, operating on Shkedi’s orders, defied Polish authorities and flew low over Auschwitz. Shkedi had personally inscribed most of the photos, “To remember. Not to forget. To rely only on ourselves.” Shkedi was the man responsible for planning the al-Kibar operation.

This exhortation to self-reliance is laudatory, but as practical advice to prime ministers it probably requires a slight revision: “To remember. Not to forget. To rely, when necessary, only on ourselves.” Olmert was wise to seek assistance from Bush, and he did so shrewdly, but his readiness to go it alone in very trying circumstances was his greatest asset. Without that, Bush’s red light would never have turned to green.

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.