Yesterday marked the two-year anniversary of the opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem, which has not brought about the diplomatic disasters or waves of violence opponents of such a move have warned of for decades. Now, writes Efraim Inbar, Israel should take advantage of the present circumstances to construct housing and infrastructure in the city and its immediate environs—for reasons religious, historical, and strategic:

The recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state appears to have become a permanent principle of U.S. foreign policy. The former vice-president Joseph Biden, the current Democratic candidate for president, has said that, if elected, he will not move the embassy back to Tel Aviv. As more time passes, additional countries will surely be persuaded to emulate America and recognize reality.

The Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan has further fortified Israel’s control over Jerusalem. The plan affirms Israel’s right to the entirety of “undivided Jerusalem,” reiterating its recognition as Israel’s capital. The plan places the Old City of Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, and gives Israel the task of safeguarding holy sites and guaranteeing freedom of worship, including al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount.

Israel intends to maintain the Jordan Valley as its eastern defensible border. This requires securing the highway from the Mediterranean coast [in the west], where most Israelis live, to the Jordan Valley [in the east] via an undivided Jerusalem and [the Jerusalem suburb of] Maaleh Adumim. Jerusalem, the only junction along the central mountains in the Land of Israel, is the linchpin for maintaining a defensive line across to the Jordan Valley.

The first priority of the new Israeli government should be building in and around Jerusalem. Within the parameters of the Trump plan, the new Israeli government should seize the opportunity to strengthen its hold over the city.

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.