Yesterday the Lebanese government claimed that Israeli drones had attempted an attack on Beirut. More credibly, there have been reports—as yet unconfirmed by Jerusalem—that the IDF struck a military installation along the Syria-Lebanon border belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP–GC). These attacks were likely an attempt to thwart Hizballah retaliation for Sunday’s air-strikes near Damascus. Sunniva Rose explains the PFLP–GC’s origin, and the threat the organization poses:

A pro-Syrian militant group, the PFLP-GC was formed in 1968 by Ahmad Jibril. . . . In 1965, Syrian intelligence had helped [Jibril] establish the armed Marxist-Leninist group [now known simply as the] Palestinian Liberation Front. Jibril entered negotiations to be part of the unified PFLP but withdrew before it was officially created in 1967 and established the PFLP-GC.

In its five-decade history, the PFLP-GC developed a name as a troublemaker in Lebanon and Syria. . . . The militants entered the 1975 Lebanese civil war—which raged for fifteen years—on the side of the Syrians, gaining notoriety for looting gold from banks in central Beirut. . . . Unlike the PLO, the PFLP-GC does not recognize any peace agreement with Israel.

After Lebanon’s civil war ended in 1990, the PFLP-GC was one of only two Palestinian factions to refuse to disarm. . . . The PFLP-GC has also fought alongside Syrian regime forces since the start of [that country’s] civil war.

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.