A professor emeritus of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at Bar-Ilan University, Raphael Israeli is a leading expert on the Arab citizens of the Jewish state. In an interview with Nadav Shragai, he expresses concern that, rather than integrating into Israeli society, parts of this population are increasingly rejecting it. Israeli takes as evidence the extreme anti-Zionist, pro-terrorist positions held by the Knesset members representing Arab parties, and disputes the frequently heard argument that these politicians are more extreme than the voters who elect them:

[The] Arab public, that is supposedly not represented by the Arab leadership, votes for them again and again. . . . Until a year ago, it might have been theoretically possible to assume that half of the Arab population opposed the sort of extremism [expressed by these politicians], but the spike in Arab voter turnout for the Joint Arab List in the last two elections shows that the public and the party are one.

Arab Israelis, who are 20 percent of the population, want to integrate, but they vote [in large numbers] for a confederation of parties that define Israel as a state that commits theft and robbery. . . . For them, Zionism is colonialism. . . . There is no process of moderation, only radicalization. The Joint Arab List is [a group of] parties that emphasize their Palestinian-hood rather than their Israeli-hood.

Nonetheless, Israeli would be happy to see more moderate Arab politicians, like Issawi Frej of the far-left Meretz party, take part in governing the country:

Someone like Frej [is] not a Zionist. He’s a moderate person who is willing to coexist [with Jews in a Jewish state]. I would make him part of the government. It could be a unique step toward goodwill. But how can someone [like the Joint List’s leader Ayman Odeh], who demands that the Law of Return or Nation-State Law be revoked, or demands [the ability to] veto operations in Gaza, be part of the government or what holds the government up? Only suicidal people would extend their hand to anyone who wishes to undermine the foundations of their state.

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.