Last week, Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas politburo, sent a letter to the leaders of the Yemenite Houthi rebels—a group whose motto is “Allah is great; death to America; death to Israel; curse the Jews; victory to Islam!”—calling for an alliance. Khaled Abu Toameh, noting that the two groups are backed by Iran to varying degrees, comments:

Haniyeh’s letter to the Houthi leadership is clearly part of Hamas’s effort to enlist the Yemeni group for attacks on Israel. Hamas seems to be hoping that its alliance with the Houthi movement might stop some Arab countries from normalizing their relations with Israel.

Hamas’s leaders have repeatedly expressed deep concern over the apparent rapprochement between some Gulf states and Israel. . . . Some Arabs. [however], are now voicing extreme unease over the cooperation between Hamas and the Houthi movement. They say it would strengthen Iran’s terrorist proxies and cause a further deterioration of the situation in war-torn Yemen.

The “price” Iran is demanding for its financial and military aid is that Hamas remain a loyal proxy and carry out all instructions it receives from Tehran, including meddling in the internal affairs of Arab states and launching terrorist attacks against Israel.

The Hamas-Houthi alliance also shows that Iran is seeking to expand the terrorist activities of its agents in the Gaza Strip, Yemen. and Lebanon not only against Israel and the U.S., but against Arab and Islamic states as well.

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.