Last week, a State Department official told reporters that the U.S. is considering granting Qatar the status of a major non-NATO ally; meanwhile, unconfirmed reports have been circulating that this wealthy Gulf emirate may be the next Arab state to normalize relations with Israel. Writing shortly before these developments, Edy Cohen explains that Doha’s policies are inimical to the interests of Israel, the U.S., and its own Arab neighbors:

Qatar stands out like a sore thumb against [a] renewed Arab consensus, through its support for the Muslim Brotherhood, cozy relationship with Iran, and funding of terrorist organizations. . . . Qatar, alone in its vehement objection to Israeli peace with the Gulf Arabs, has unleashed incessant vitriol against the normalization agreements, mainly through its state-owned broadcaster Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera demonstrates its hypocrisy openly by broadcasting completely different messages to different audiences. When addressing the West it presents a liberal façade, but in Arabic, it fervently disseminates outrageous incitement against Israel and its deals with the UAE and Bahrain.

Al Jazeera has always viciously incited against Israel and encouraged violent Palestinian “struggle.” Its reports invariably present the Palestinians as the victims of an evil, merciless Israeli regime. The fact that most of Al Jazeera’s employees, including more than a handful of anchors, are of Palestinian descent gives this incitement a strong tailwind.

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.