Despite John Kerry’s claim in 2013 to have arranged for the dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons, Bashar al-Assad’s forces have continued to use them with impunity. Islamic State (IS) has employed chemical weapons as well, as have various anti-regime forces. Hizballah, too, may have already acquired some, and if not, is likely trying to do so. Dany Shoham explains what is at stake:

Although chemical weapons have not brought about a major shift in the course of warfare, they have not been ineffective, offering their users a series of accumulating net benefits, notably intimidating survivors into flight. . . .

It is [also] possible that IS will attempt an act of “mega-sabotage,” meaning a high-impact operation involving chemical weapons or another weapon of mass destruction. The organization is very much inclined to pursue such an operation, either in the Middle East or in Europe or the U.S. Its weakened condition suggests that it is unlikely to pull off such an attack—but its motivation to attempt one is undoubtedly growing.

Of the [groups with chemical weapons], IS is the most troubling. IS has been dented by a variety of adversaries over the past year, but has retained its relatively rudimentary chemical-weapons capacities. . . . The organization has also tried to procure biological and radiological weapons, with no clear outcome as yet. . . .

Beyond the Middle East, the U.S. and Europe are IS’s main targets. . . . Israel, too, has reason to be concerned about IS attempts at chemical attacks. Militants of IS or its affiliates in the Golan Heights have confronted the IDF very little, but there is unverified—though concrete—information in the Israeli media pointing to their possession of chemical weapons.

Hizballah, for its part, could receive chemical or biological weapons from Syria, or, just as likely, from Iran, which is known to have stocks of both.

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.