As China emerges as a major patron of Iran, and the U.S. encourages Israel and its other allies to take a more circumspect attitude toward Beijing, there is more reason than ever for Jerusalem to cultivate ties with other Asian nations. Japan, an American ally that has enjoyed warming relations with the Jewish state for several years, should be foremost among them, argues Joshua Walker:

The [2019] Japan-Israel Free Trade Agreement has received scant attention—not to mention the significant investment and trade between the two countries that is far more strategic than current volume would suggest.

Jerusalem and Tokyo have [also] pursued more engagement with regional American allies. An Indo-Pacific led by the U.S.-Japan alliance, and a “new” Middle East led by the U.S.-Israel alliance, will only go so far without important partners from India and Australia to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—all of whom both Japan and Israel have been engaging with in new and innovative ways.

Ultimately, in democracies like the U.S., Israel, and Japan, engagement can be driven not just by heads of state, but also by the private sectors and societies of each nation—which is why U.S.-Israel and U.S.-Japan relations have flourished. It is now time to go beyond the bilateral and move on to the trilateral, where there are synergies in specific [political and economic] areas. . . . Japan can benefit from Israel’s innovative and entrepreneurial culture while also serving as a bulwark against China, this century’s preeminent geopolitical threat to the free world.

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.