Last week, U.S. military officials confirmed that Israel has carried out multiple attacks on munitions storehouses and bases used by Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq. These attacks appear to be an extension of the IDF’s efforts to prevent an Iranian military buildup in Syria. Meanwhile, writes Eyal Zisser, Tehran has been planning its revenge:

The Israel Air Force managed to thwart a terrorist attack by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Sunday night. The foiled attack, which was likely to have taken place well within Israeli territory by means of drones, was probably designed to serve as retaliation for . . . Israeli strikes on Iranian assets in Syria and Iraq.

It appears that Israel’s success in denying Iran a permanent military presence in Syria, and its successful efforts to target Iran and its allies across the region, have enraged the Revolutionary Guards, leading them to take the unusual step of launching a (now-foiled) terrorist attack. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Guard’s expeditionary wing, was probably certain that the attack would be successful, to the point that he apparently leaked his plans to the Iranian paper Kayhan, [which] warned last week that Israel would wake up one day and discover that its population centers had been attacked by Iranian drones.

The Israeli attack near Damascus was a great military and intelligence success, and it sends a message to Iran that its plots will be discovered and thwarted by Israel. This is not enough to stop Iran from carrying out hostile acts, but in this protracted match between Israel and Iran, the former has so far scored more points.

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.