Last week, Ankara—likely trying to make the most of Saudi Arabia’s killing of the pro-Turkish journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul—set free Andrew Brunson, a pastor from North Carolina, after imprisoning him for two years on trumped-up charges. Turkey, under Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule, has in recent years moved in an Islamist and undemocratic direction, supported Hamas, broken longstanding ties with Israel, flirted with Russia and even Iran, and generally undermined its once-firm alliance with the U.S. To Soner Cagaptay, Brunson’s release could lead to a broader thaw in Turco-American ties, especially since the two countries share many interests:

Turkey borders Iran, Iraq, Syria (including territory until recently held by Islamic State), and Russia across the Black Sea. It’s much easier, less cumbersome, and less costly, to implement U.S. policies regarding those countries and entities with Turkey on board. And to be sure, Turkey needs the United States as well. . . .

Yet while, Brunson’s release is a good step toward normal relations, there is plenty more to do. Most immediately, Congress has threatened sanctions if Ankara goes ahead with its plans to purchase in 2019 the Russian S-400 missile-defense system, a move that [violates Turkey’s commitments as a NATO member]. To cement his reset with President Trump, Erdogan should reconsider his decision regarding the S-400 system. . . .

Donald Trump, [for his part], needs to reconsider U.S. policy regarding cooperation with the Syrian Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG), an armed group that Washington has relied on to fight Islamic State (IS). The YPG is an offshoot of the PKK, a terrorist entity that Turkey has been fighting for decades. After defeating IS, YPG—a group with a Marxist pedigree—took over vast Sunni Arab areas of Syria. Washington needs to empower Sunni Arabs in Syria if it doesn’t want IS, which feeds on Sunni Muslim resentment over political exclusion, to return. . . . .

Erdogan should continue to support Trump’s new Syria envoy in pushing back against Iran, Russia, and the Assad regime there. If Assad is brought to justice, millions of Syrians brutalized by him during the war will have closure, also shutting the door to IS’s return. Erdogan can help Trump beyond Syria to isolate Iran. For example, Turkey could join U.S. economic sanctions against Iran, which are taking a toll on the regime in Tehran.

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.