Thanks to Russian and Iranian intervention, the chances of the Assad regime’s defeat seem very slim; yet it is equally unlikely that Assad will regain complete control of the country. Furthermore, there no longer exist democratic forces opposed simultaneously to al-Qaeda, Islamic State (IS), and Assad. Jonathan Spyer puts forward a plan for the U.S. and its Western allies that takes these dire circumstances into account:

It ought to be fairly obvious why a victory for the Assad regime would be a disaster for the West. Assad, an enthusiastic user of chemical weapons against his own people, is aligned with the most powerful anti-Western coalition in the Middle East, . . . dominated by the Islamic Republic of Iran. It includes Hizballah in Lebanon, the Shiite militias of Iraq, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. If Assad were to win, the Iranian alliance would consolidate its domination of the entire land area between the Iraq-Iran border and the Mediterranean Sea—a major step toward regional hegemony for Iran. . . .

With no particular joy but a good deal of confidence, I can report that the Syrian rebellion today is dominated in its entirety by Sunni Islamist forces. And the most powerful of these are the most radical. . . . So if there is no British or Western interest in a victory for either the regime or the rebels, what should be done with regard to Syria?

First of all, it is important to understand that Syria as a unitary state no longer exists. . . . [T]he country has fragmented into enclaves, and is not going to be reunited in the near future, if at all. . . .

The West, [however], has established a successful and effective patron-client relationship with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. Dominated by the Kurdish YPG, but including also Arab tribal forces such as the Sanadid militia, this is the force that is reducing the dominions of the Islamic State in eastern Syria, in partnership with Western air power and special forces. . . .

The destruction of the Islamic State by a strengthened SDF would lead to control of Syria east of the Euphrates by a Western client of proven anti-terrorist credentials. Further west, the truncated enclaves of Assad and of the Sunni Arab rebels would remain. It is possible that, over time, the fragmentation of Syria would be formalized. But it’s equally likely that the various component parts would remain in de-facto existence for the foreseeable future.

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.