In 2007, the Kremlin-owned television- and Internet-news platform RT (formerly Russia Today) opened an Arabic-language channel, which has since then become one of the most popular news outlets in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and several other Arab countries. RT, which began in 2005, offering only English-language broadcasting, was created to distribute pro-Russian propaganda to a non-Russian audience; it subsequently has created television channels, websites, and social- media accounts in several other languages. To RT, Moscow more recently added the Sputnik news service, which also features extensive Arabic-language content. Anna Borshchevskaya and Catherine Cleveland analyze the perspectives being spread by the two networks in the Middle East:

The RT and Sputnik websites typically publish brief news articles and occasionally longer op-eds. The quickly published factual articles help shape media opinion primarily through click-bait titles that often editorialize otherwise neutral content. Meanwhile, the lengthier op-eds and TV segments tend to present more overtly conspiratorial points of view, such as the video segment “The Vatican, the Masons, the CIA, and the Mafia . . . with Documents, Names, and Records of Assassinations” or the op-ed “Israel Announces Its Rights; The Crimea Is Ours.” Relying on conspiracy theories to develop a sense of “revealing the truth” is a tactic RT Arabic shares with its English-language sibling. . . .

[While] RT English has adopted a style that often employs sarcasm and irony to suggest holes in a “dominant narrative,” . . . RT Arabic relies on established media narratives—and specifically those that reinforce an anti-Western perspective. . . .

And while RT’s English-language coverage often inserts a positive picture of the Assad regime in a supposedly “alternative” view of groups such as the White Helmets, a volunteer aid outfit, [RT Arabic’s] coverage of Syria emphasizes Russia’s control over the situation, as exemplified in the assertion that Israel’s July 2018 downing of an Iranian drone over Israeli airspace occurred after affirming the drone was not of Russian origin, and in the repeated emphasis on both Russian and Assad military successes against “terrorists.” RT frames its coverage to cause maximum distrust of Syrian opposition groups. . . .

Coverage of Israel embodies RT Arabic’s inconsistent tone when faced with delicate subject matter. On the one hand, RT Arabic relies on the longstanding media practices of Arab countries, such as a focus on Israel’s military and civil actions against Palestinian communities and conspiracy theories about the reach of the Mossad. On the other hand, RT presents Israel as cautious and respectful of Russia’s regional interests. Such coverage lines up with the Kremlin’s desire to portray itself as a great power, to which a country like Israel is beholden.

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.