In November, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, signed an agreement with Libya’s official government in Tripoli, with which it shares a pro-Muslim Brotherhood orientation. The agreement recognizes Ankara’s economic rights and control over natural resources as extending deep into the Mediterranean Sea. It thus contradicts the claims of the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF)—consisting of Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Italy, Greece, and Cyprus. Meanwhile, Turkey has also been backing Tripoli militarily in its civil war with the forces of Khalifa Haftar, who has the support of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, and France. Eran Lerman sees in Erdogan’s actions an attempt to push apart the EMGF while expanding his influence in Africa:

Israel’s interests, at this tense time vis-à-vis Iran—and for many other good reasons—require an effort to avoid a violent confrontation in the eastern Mediterranean. Turkey may be hostile, but it is not yet an active enemy. Everything short of a military confrontation needs to be done, though, to deter Erdogan from establishing a barrier diagonally across the Mediterranean, barring Cyprus, Egypt, and Israel from connecting their gas infrastructure to Greece and hence to Europe.

While keeping a necessary low profile on Libyan internal affairs, Israel’s role should be focused upon working hand in hand with all EMGF partners, and in particular Greece and Cyprus. The latter have some influence on all three fronts—lobbying in the U.S.; using their EU status; and utilizing the links of common heritage that connect them to Russia.

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.