Last week, the German press reported that Israel was close to making a deal with Hamas in which the terrorist group would release two civilians it is holding captive, as well as the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed in the 2014 Gaza war. In return, Jerusalem would free hundreds of Palestinian terrorists from its prisons. Ruthie Blum notes that calling such an exchange a “prisoner swap” suggests that there is some “moral parity” between arrestees and hostages. But, she contends, there isn’t:

The terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip is not as stupid as it is evil, after all. Indeed, Hamas honchos are well aware of the value that the Jewish state places on human life in general, and on that of its own populace in particular. They also know that the Jewish state does not abandon soldiers, dead or alive, in the battlefield. [The bodies of] Hadar Goldin and Oren Shaul, then, are assets just as precious to Hamas as the captives Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed. All four are bargaining chips to hold over Israel’s head and cash in when the time is right.

The former Mossad official David Meidan, Netanyahu’s POW-MIA coordinator, [also] was the key negotiator in the deal that led to the release of Gilad Shalit in 2011—after five and a half years in Hamas captivity—in exchange for the release of 1,027 terrorists. Although Israelis across the political spectrum wept with joy when Shalit made it back home safely, many had opposed the deal for his release on two related grounds. One was that it served as additional incentive to Hamas to abduct soldiers for the purpose of extortion. The other was that the released terrorists would pose a grave danger to Israelis in uniform and out. Both proved correct.

As soon as the terrorists were out of jail, they picked up where they left off. Some of those deported to Gaza became part of Hamas’s top echelons; others got to work developing and firing missiles at Israel. Those sent to Judea and Samaria promptly began rioting, throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at passing cars, and creating cells to mastermind more deadly attacks against Israelis. Many of the above were apprehended and reincarcerated. Shockingly but not surprisingly, those are among the prisoners whose release Hamas is demanding today.

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.