Writing under the pseudonym Luqman el-Masry, an Egyptian analyst considers some of his country’s political pathologies, especially with regard to the Jewish state:

Why do we [Egyptians] view Palestinians as friends and Israelis as foes? Why do we have a strategic partnership with the U.S. though the average Egyptian believes, as do most Arabs, that the U.S. is a vile state that conspires with Israel against them? We have a peace treaty with Israel, but so much as to contemplate visiting that country is considered an act of treason.

Conspiracy theories are rife across the Arab world, . . . which enforce the dual notion that the West and Israel are perpetually conspiring against Arabs and that, owing to the West’s perceived support for Israel, there’s not much that can be done about it.

This [fatalism] does Egyptians a great disservice. . . . Consider, for example, the widespread belief among Egyptians in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Instead of working to establish a democratic, healthy community, Egyptians content themselves with the belief that they are hapless victims of a group of sinister [Jews] who held secret meetings to decide their future along with that of the entire world. Why try to shape our country’s future ourselves?

El-Masry hopes that things might change as Egyptians grow increasingly cynical about the failed pan-Arab vision that for so long dominated the country’s politics, and that they will eventually come to appreciate their northern neighbor and ally.

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.