In the last two weeks, Hamas has resumed terrorizing southwestern Israel, using explosives carried by kites and balloons as well as rocket fire—and thus causing severe forest fires in the area. The IDF has responded with airstrikes. Elior Levy examines the situation:

In recent days, Hamas has been under pressure from Qatar, Egypt, and the UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process Nickolay Mladenov. . . . But for now the organization is adamant in continuing on its current course of sending incendiary balloons into Israel, while reiterating that any Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip will be answered with counter-attacks in the form of rocket fire or other offensive activities.

Hamas is also currently dealing with pressure from within as a result of the shortage of fuel within the Strip, which has led to Gaza’s power plant ceasing operations. . . . The electricity crisis, the discontinuation of infrastructure projects in the Strip, and Hamas’s assumption that Israel will wish to avoid another campaign against the organization in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, has led Hamas to stand firm in its demands.

It seems that Israel is still giving mediators a chance to bring about renewed calm while also trying to avoid violent escalation. Nonetheless, Jerusalem is determined not to let this recent bout of escalation turn into a war of attrition.

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.