In a detailed assessment of the IDF’s capabilities, Kenneth Brower argues that in many ways it is mightier than many Israelis realize. Through air power alone, Brower contends, Israel could likely cripple the entire Russian expeditionary force in Syria in less than hour. And that’s not all:

Israel can defeat any conceivable Russian expeditionary force, but obviously cannot defeat Russia or reach Moscow. Similarly, Russia cannot defeat Israel or reach Jerusalem. . . . Israel can [also] defeat Iran and its proxies at a relatively acceptable cost—but only if there is decisive Israeli political and military leadership, which is now lacking. If military power has to be used preemptively to neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat, Israel, acting unilaterally, is far more militarily capable than the U.S.

[Indeed], neither the U.S. nor Russia can project meaningful conventional military power into the Middle East unless they are provided with both many months to mobilize and the absence of opposition during the long process of deployment. This conclusion implies that any U.S.-proposed mutual defense treaty offered to Israel would be militarily meaningless. Moreover, . . . any such treaty would actually result in significantly diminished Israeli national security.

Nonetheless, writes Brower, there is no reason for Jerusalem to maintain delusions of invincibility. First, it lacks the ability to mobilize its ground forces as quickly and effectively as it once could. Second, there is the dangerous possibility of Iran attacking both directly and through its proxies from Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza, while also launching missiles directly from its own soil. Such an attack would quickly overwhelm the IDF’s top-notch missile-defense systems. To protect against such a scenario, Jerusalem must be willing to learn the lessons of both the 1967 and the Yom Kippur wars, and be willing to launch a preemptive attack:

If Israel were to hand Iran the initiative and allow it to launch a surprise attack on Israel that combines massive missile and rocket barrages with large-scale infantry raids across its northern and Gaza borders, Israel’s air defenses would be saturated, its vital military and civilian infrastructure would be heavily damaged, the mobilization of Israeli military reserves would be significantly delayed and disrupted, there would be heavy Israeli civilian casualties, and both Israeli civilian and military personnel would become prisoners of war. In short, it would be extremely painful if Israel chose not to preempt its enemies.

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.