In 2018, two books appeared in Hebrew on the subject of the so-called Palestinian “right of return,” which, if recognized, would allow for the influx of the descendants of Arab refugees from the Israeli War of Independence into an Israel that has already surrendered control over the West Bank. The War over the Right of Return, by Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf, explains why there is no legal, moral, or historical basis for such a right, and why recognizing it would be a disastrous mistake. In Nakba in Hebrew: A Political Journey, Eitan Bronstein-Aparicio and Eleonore Merza-Bronstein—both professional self-hating Jews—make the opposite case. Reviewing both books, Emmanuel Navon writes of the latter:

Bronstein describes at length his efforts to identify the remnants of Arab villages abandoned in 1948 and to make Israelis feel guilty about their erasure. . . . Bronstein lists villages whose names were Hebraized after Israel’s independence, such as Beit Guvrin (formerly Bait Jibrin) and Ein Ayala (formerly Ain Azal). But a similar list could be made of villages with Arabized names: Saffuriya (formerly Tzippori in Hebrew), Nablus (formerly Neapolis in Greek), and Latrun (formerly Le Toron in medieval French), for example. . . . The renaming of conquered cities is hardly an Israeli invention.

Bronstein’s “solution” to the Israel-Palestinian conflict is the practical implementation of the Palestinian “right of return,” [of which] the inevitable outcome would be a binational state with a Jewish minority. Anyone familiar with the Middle East, and with the history of the Jews in Arab lands, knows that such a state would not resemble Canada, Belgium, or Switzerland—but rather Lebanon, Iraq, or Syria. Fortunately, for Bronstein and Merza, they have foreign passports that would allow them to run for their lives after “solving” the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Back in his native Argentina, Bronstein will undoubtedly look for the remnants of former Inca villages destroyed by the Spanish. But then, the Incas themselves were an empire, one that colonized the Diaguitas in the mid-15th century. Bronstein could decide instead to do justice on behalf of the Mapuches. But they, too, conquered other tribes, such as the Puelches and the Querandis. In other words, Bronstein’s Manichean theory of “colonized” versus “colonizers” does not stand the test of historical scrutiny, and is therefore a myth.

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.