An interview with the Israeli marine ecologist Eyal Bigal offers an original angle on life in and around the Jewish state. Israel’s shark population is flourishing, which, as well as being good for the sharks and the marine ecosystem, is good for Israeli research institutions. Because of the increase, Israel is becoming a hub for Mediterranean shark research. Says Bigal:

The Mediterranean is one of the most dangerous environments for sharks. Over the last 60 to 70 years, we’ve lost 95 percent of the population. In recent years, however, Israel has become an unlikely home for the sharks during the winter months. What’s been fascinating is that the sharks have been aggregating around the country’s coastal power stations, perhaps due to the higher temperatures, creating a jacuzzi effect near the plants.

Has Israel done anything to aid the growth of these new guests?

Without realizing it, Israel is actually doing a lot to help. Because sharks aren’t kosher, they’re not being fished for, and we’ve created somewhat of a safe haven for them, unlike in many nearby regions. . . . This is still one of the most nutrient-poor regions in the world and it’s thus very surprising that top marine predators should have been coming here in large numbers.

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.