Yesterday was the twentieth anniversary of the coordinated truck-bombings, carried out by al-Qaeda, of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania—which left 224 dead and thousands wounded. In planning the bombing, its most deadly attack prior to September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda received help and training from Iran and its proxy Hizballah, and it seems that Osama bin Laden deliberately modeled the attack on Hizballah’s 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. Thomas Joscelyn writes:

In early November 1998, the U.S. government indicted various al-Qaeda members for the embassy bombings. The indictment included this sentence: “Al-Qaeda also forged alliances with . . . the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hizballah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States.” . . . [O]fficial sources continued to build upon [this allegation] in the years that followed. . . .

Ali Mohamed agreed to a plea deal as part of the embassy bombing proceedings. . . . Here is . . . what Mohamed said about al-Qaeda’s relations with Iran and Hizballah: “I was aware of certain contacts between al-Qaeda and . . . Iran and Hizballah on the other side. I arranged security for a meeting in the Sudan between [Imad] Mughniyeh, Hizballah’s chief [of operations], and bin Laden. Hizballah provided explosives training for al-Qaeda. . . . Iran supplied Egyptian Jihad [an affiliated organization that later merged with al-Qaeda] with weapons. Iran also used Hizballah to supply explosives that were disguised to look like rocks. . . .

Some commentators, including a former Obama administration official, impugn the motives of anyone who raises the issue of Iran’s relationship with al-Qaeda. They argue that this is all about justifying a war with Iran. That is an attempt to change the conversation.

But facts are stubborn. The evidence [of collaboration between Iran and al-Qaeda] comes from Clinton-era federal prosecutors, al-Qaeda witnesses, the bipartisan 9/11 Commission Report, and Clinton-era intelligence reports. To this list we may add a string of additional official pronouncements. Between July 2011 and July 2016, the Obama administration’s own Treasury and State Departments repeatedly pointed to a separate “agreement” between the Iranian regime and al-Qaeda. This arrangement allows al-Qaeda to operate its “core facilitation pipeline” on Iranian soil.

This is not all there is to Iran’s dealings with al-Qaeda. There have been multiple antagonistic episodes between the two sides. . . . Yet some al-Qaeda leaders have managed to maintain a foothold inside Iran despite of the conflict between the [two].

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.