Opponents of the application of Israeli law to parts of Judea and Samaria have argued that it might result in rioting, and perhaps revolt, in the areas governed by the Palestinian Authority (PA). Of course, similar predictions were made about America’s decision to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem, and were proved wrong. Hillel Frisch asks whether this time will be different:

As noted by the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, even professional revolutionaries who spend their days and nights trying to foment rebellions are almost always just as surprised as the targeted states when a rebellion actually breaks out. . . . Consider . . . the violent protests that followed the recent death of George Floyd and the severe beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles nearly 30 years ago. Other similar events occurred between those incidents that did not elicit such a response.

The Palestinian officials who are threatening mass violence . . . know [that] most of the “Days of Rage” they have called for yielded only minor demonstrations. . . . Of course, this does not mean a declaration of sovereignty will not elicit protests. The PA has Fatah professionals who are paid to foment strife, but they are not in a position to ensure numbers that would produce mass and continuous violence.

As for the Palestinian security forces trained by the U.S. since 2006, they are hardly likely to be deployed to commit violence against Israel. They are too important to the PA, which needs them to suppress Hamas—the terrorist group that evicted the PA from Gaza in 2007. . . . Most Palestinian security officers have been in the service for over ten years and are at least 30 years old. Many have families and all have been accumulating pensions. It is doubtful that they will be enthused about taking on the far-superior IDF.

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.