Since coming to power in 2013, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi—his faith in his country’s alliance with the U.S. shaken by the events of the previous two years—has been cultivating improved relations with Russia. Ramy Aziz explains the new alliance, and warns against its dangers:

Russia is challenging the West, including through its current effort at gaining a foothold in Syria and in a number of [other] countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa. . . . To take but one striking recent example: in December 2017, at a summit with the Egyptian president in Cairo, after signing the final contracts to establish the el-Dabaa nuclear plant, Vladimir Putin said that he was trying to create more cooperation with Egypt, and described the country as an old and reliable partner in the Middle East and North Africa. . . .

Putin believes Sisi to be the right match for a military partnership. Putin found what he had long been looking for: a military man who had risen up in politics and was trying to rule in difficult circumstances, and was therefore in need of support and ready to offer concessions. . . . [H]e worked with full determination to turn Egypt into a country within the new Russian orbit. The most important aspects of [Putin’s] effort have been military, economic, and political. . . .

Russian and Egyptian forces carried out military exercises known as “Protectors of Friendship” in September 2017. Earlier the same year, some Russian special forces were deployed at a military base in the [country’s] western region, adjacent to the Libyan border, to . . . offer assistance to Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan militias, which enjoy both Egyptian and Russian backing. Recently, the two countries agreed to prepare a cooperation document allowing Russia to use Egyptian skies and military bases for military operations. . . .

Although the current U.S. administration continues to give Egypt military and economic support in its war on terrorists and insurgents in the Sinai, this has not succeeded in breaking ties between Moscow and Cairo and has not managed to stop Russia’s persistent efforts to establish influence in Egypt. Sisi views Russia . . . as an ally that can be depended upon more than the United States, notwithstanding all the aid that the United States has given Egypt. For that reason, the United States needs to adopt clearer and stronger language with Sisi regarding his rush to embrace Russia, like the language it used when it discovered cooperation between Egypt and North Korea. In the long run, Russia and Putin are no less dangerous than North Korea and Kim Jong-Un, and so the United States should work to end Russia’s efforts to establish influence in Egypt.

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.