Responding to the murderous suicide bombing in Manchester on Monday night, Max Boot notes that it is “difficult, but not impossible” to prevent such attacks:

Recall that Israel found itself under incessant assault from suicide bombers during the second intifada (2000-2005). Israeli security forces figured out how to defeat this terrible menace through a combination of offensive and defensive security measures. The number of suicide attacks in Israel fell from 53 in 2002 to none by 2009. Especially important in this success are the still-ongoing efforts by the IDF to police the West Bank and disrupt terror cells before they can strike. What the Israelis learned is that suicide bombers do not work alone: they require other people for indoctrination and preparation. Stop those other people—who are not suicidal—and you can prevent the human fuse from being lit. . . .

But even when individuals are arrested, they can be replaced so long as the ideologies of hate remain alluring. Islamic State (IS) may be losing its grip on the ground in Iraq and Syria, but there is a real danger that its virtual caliphate will long outlive the physical one. . . [I]t is [thus] necessary to convince those who might be sympathetic to IS and its ilk that these groups are not all they are cracked up to be.

In this regard, MBC, one of the most-watched TV networks in the Middle East, is performing a signal service by airing a 30-part series, Black Crows, that shows the unpleasant reality of life under IS’s rule; . . . assuming it is widely watched, it has the potential to strike a more potent blow against IS than any number of American bombs.

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.