In 1970, three Arab terrorists attacked a group of Israelis at the Munich airport. They were arrested by German police, but released a few months later as part of a deal following an unrelated airplane hijacking. Eldad Beck, citing a new study of the subject, writes that this act of capitulation “paved the way for the slaughter of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.”

From 1968-1984, 48 of the Palestinian terrorist attacks in Europe were carried out on German soil. The deadliest was the slaughter of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 by eight members of Black September.

The then-director of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir, who had been sent to Germany to track [German] attempts to rescue the athletes, asked his German counterpart what his government intended to do with the terrorists who remained alive, since the Palestinians could hijack a Lufthansa plane and force the Germans to free them. The head of Germany’s spy agency said he couldn’t guarantee that scenario wouldn’t occur. . . . [I]t took little time for Zamir’s prediction to be fulfilled.

[This] capitulation paved the way for formal relations between West Germany and the PLO, which demanded a mission in the West German capital, to be housed in the offices of the Arab League. The Palestinians also asked the Germans to help fund the PLO. A telegram sent on February 28, 1973 by Helmut Radius, head of the Middle East Department in the German Foreign Ministry, ordered the transfer of 50,000 marks to support the Wafa news agency, which disseminated Palestinian propaganda. Radius also issued instructions that the purpose of the funds be hidden to avoid diplomatic complications, although there is no confirmation that the money was actually transferred.

Remko Leehmhuis, the author of the study, also remarked on the “open anti-Semitism” he found in German foreign-office documents discussing these policies.

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.