Iraq was once home to a sizable Palestinian population. But since the beginning of the Iraq war, they have been driven from their home by the thousands. Khaled Abu Toameh writes:

Since 2003, the number of Palestinians [in Iraq] has dropped from 25,000 to 6,000. Palestinian activists say the Iraqis are waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the country’s Palestinian population. The activists say that since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Shiite militias in Iraq have been systematically attacking and intimidating the Palestinian population, . . . prompting many to flee.

The Shiites . . . are opposed to the presence of non-Iraqi Sunnis, including the Palestinians, in their country—especially in the capital, Baghdad. . . . Sunnis in Iraq who had opposed Saddam Hussein [when he was in power] have also been waging war on the Palestinians, in retaliation for their support for him. . . .

But what is most interesting is the complete indifference displayed by international human-rights organizations, the media, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) toward the mistreatment of Palestinians in Arab countries. The PA, whose leaders are busy inciting against Israel on a daily basis, does not have time to care about its people in the Arab world. . . . . The UN and other international bodies [likewise seem not to have] heard of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the Arab world. They too are so obsessed with Israel that they prefer not to hear about the suffering of Palestinians under Arab regimes.

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.