After months of planning, U.S. special forces attacked the compound in the northeastern Syrian province of Idlib where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—Islamic State’s self-styled caliph—was hiding. When cornered, Baghdadi blew himself up. Ron Ben-Yishai sums up the implications for Islamic State (IS) and for Israel:

Baghdadi’s death may accelerate the occupation of the Idlib enclave by the Assad regime, helped by Russian bombing and backed by Shiite militias operating under Iranian patronage. Islamic State’s Sunni rival, the al-Qaeda organization formerly called Nusra Front, is also active in Idlib and is no less radical or less determined to fight Assad’s regime. Nonetheless, the death of Baghdadi may affect the morale of all the Sunni jihadists now concentrated in Idlib to prepare for the final battle.

According to the United Nations, the organization still has some 30,000 fighters in scattered underground cells in Iraq and Syria; these cells include foreign Muslim civilians from all over the world—from Europe to Chechnya and Afghanistan and the Philippines. IS also has thousands of fighters in the Sinai Peninsula battling the Egyptian army, as well as active and murderous groups in Nigeria, Pakistan, France and Belgium. And this is only a partial list.

Baghdadi’s death is good news [for Israel, however], and one can assume that fewer and fewer Arab citizens of Israel will now try to reach Syria and Iraq to fight in Islamic State’s ranks. Even so, IS underground activity in Europe is unlikely to cease. It may even be bolstered by the announcement of a new leader to replace Baghdadi and inspired by the myths created among jihadists around the world following his death.

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.