In 2015, Saudi Arabia organized an alliance of Sunni Arab states to aid the Yemenite army in fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who had seized the country’s capital in the previous year. What has come to be called the Arab Coalition includes Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain. The alliance has suffered military setbacks and has been riven with internal discord—yet if it can overcome these problems, writes Irina Tsukerman, it could become a beneficial force, and the U.S. can help by aiding it to focus its sights on Hizballah:

Elite and well-trained, Hizballah in Yemen has been tasked [by Iran] with transforming the Houthis into a medium-sized army capable of sophisticated operations around the world, with the Houthis quickly gaining in weapons and skills what they lack in experience. . . . Hizballah’s growing presence in Yemen may compel U.S. forces and the CIA to increase counterterrorism [operations there] and unite the fractious coalition members around the common threat. U.S. involvement has been limited so far to gathering intelligence, deploying Green Berets (who help identify missiles the Houthis are using against Arab Coalition forces and Yemeni and Saudi civilians), and countering al-Qaeda and Islamic State, [which also have a presence in Yemen]. . . .

Fighting Hizballah has become a Trump-administration priority, particularly as recent revelations have demonstrated [the organization’s] extensive presence in Latin America, collaboration with drug cartels, and infiltration into the U.S. Hizballah likewise is playing a damaging role in Syria, alongside Iranian forces. . . . Bahrain is not immune to infiltration, and Hizballah, . . . with the help of Iranian diplomats, . . . is arming the North African separatist Polisario Front, which threatens Morocco’s territorial integrity and sells illicit arms to other unstable countries. . . .

Iran relies on strong, flexible, and resilient non-state proxy groups like Hizballah. . . . Until now, the Arab Coalition and the West have been playing whack-a-mole with terrorists, occasionally freezing accounts, arresting key figures, or blowing up bases. However, [facing] the clear strategic vision of Hizballah’s expanse across many continents and countries, the Arab Coalition together with the U.S. and its allies can join forces to combat this encroaching threat. In so doing, they can deal a mortal blow to the Islamic Republic itself, severing the source of financing to its remaining proxies.

Rather than being distracted by differences and short-term, parochial goals, . . . the partners should work to create a NATO for the Arab world. The Arab NATO would be a military and security alliance dedicated to defense and insulated from economic, diplomatic, or political disputes. Such a system would also survive rival personalities and leadership changes. The U.S. can play a vital role in the training, strengthening, and support of the nascent Arab NATO, which should also cultivate willing and capable partners against common enemies. Hizballah’s role in conflicts that threaten everyone concerned would be a great place to start.

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.