On Monday, the people of Iraqi Kurdistan voted overwhelmingly for independence, despite pressure from friend and foe alike—with the exception of Israel—to refrain from holding the referendum at all. Dominic Green, rejecting the U.S. foreign-policy and military establishment’s position that Kurdish independence would fuel the region’s chaos, argues that support for the Kurds “is not just the right thing to do, it is also the sensible thing to do.”

Today, Iraqi Kurdistan is . . . a proven bulwark against Islamic State, and an obvious bulwark against the imperial ambitions of Iran. The rest of Iraq is a disaster. The failed state-building that followed the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 has bequeathed a corrupt Iranian satrapy and a leaking ulcer of Sunni fanaticism.

In a region defined by Islamism and repression, the Kurds of Iraq are moderate in religion and democratic in politics. In a region awash with anti-American and anti-Western loathing, the Kurds of Iraq are our loyal allies, and a strategic asset. . . .

The Kurds have already created their facts on the ground. Tellingly, the only endorsement of Kurdish independence came from the leader of another non-Arab [people] whose women are also more likely to be seen wearing camouflage pants than burkas: Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Jews and the Kurds have a long history of friendship: another reason why a Kurdish state aligns with American interests. Of course, Arab and Turkish leaders succumbed immediately to public paranoia about a “second Israel.” As if the development of a liberal, high-tech, egalitarian powerhouse capable of defending itself would be yet another disaster for the region.

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.