Analyzing the current strength of jihadist movements across the globe, Andrew Peek traces their origins to three events in 1979:

The Iranian revolutionaries had overthrown a close U.S. ally . . . and heir to a monarchical tradition that stretched back 2,500 years. And they had done it, seemingly, by faith. For those Arabs who were suffering under the stagnancy of one form of dictatorship or another, Iran’s revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini was an inspiration, Persian and Shiite though he was.

The second event began in 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The ragtag group of Tajik and Pashtun rebels successfully defying the mighty Soviet army were another powerful symbol, just like the Iranian Revolution. . . .

In 1979, apparently inspired by Khomeini, a group of radicals took over the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia by force, demanding the overthrow of the kingdom’s rulers. After several unsuccessful attempts, Saudi authorities regained control of the mosque; but to solidify its own position, the monarchy began to pump vast amounts of funding into promoting its own brand of extremely conservative Islam, Wahhabism, abroad. Schools, mosques, charities, prisons—all benefited from Saudi largesse as long as they adhered to the Wahhabi line. . . .

[If the war on radical Islamism is to be won], the 1979 roots—the symbols and the money—need to be pulled out of the soil.

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.