On Wednesday, Justin Trudeau’s government announced its decision to back a resolution under discussion in the Canadian parliament that calls for the immediate cessation of “any and all negotiation or discussions” with Tehran, designates the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist entity, and condemns Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s calls for the genocide of the Jews. Sohrab Ahmari comments:

[Trudeau’s] support for the resolution marked a striking about-face. Trudeau had campaigned for restoring Ottawa’s ties with Tehran, severed in 2012 by the previous, Conservative government. . . .

It turns out that even the Trudeau-led Canadian Liberals have their limits when it comes to dealing with the Islamic Republic. As the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported, Ottawa dispatched two diplomatic missions in 2017 to explore a rapprochement. But there were two stumbling blocks. The Iranians insisted that their country should be removed from Canada’s list of terror-sponsoring nations, and the Canadians were determined to free various hostages held by the regime. The Iranians were apparently immovable on the matter of the hostages and the Canadians were, in turn, unwilling to deny the basic truth about Iran’s role in sponsoring international terror.

Passage of the resolution doesn’t mean Canada is rethinking its support for Barack Obama’s nuclear deal. But it underscores Iran’s growing isolation as a new generation of Western leaders comes to learn that there are no “moderates” and “hardliners” in Tehran—only tyrants and terrorists.

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.