President Trump recently vetoed a bipartisan Congressional resolution to end American assistance to the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen, although the resolution’s supporters may yet try to override the veto. To Fatima Abo Alasrar, Michael Doran, and Bernard Haykel, such a move would do nothing to end the humanitarian and political crisis in that country, but would instead abandon its people to the brutal (and anti-Semitic) Iran-backed Houthi forces, and allow the Islamic Republic to establish a Hizballah-like entity on Saudi Arabia’s borders where it could threaten American interests and American allies. The three scholars give an in-depth analysis of the historical and ideological background to the conflict, of its strategic implications, and of what Washington can do about it. (Moderated by Lee Smith. Video, 100 minutes. A complete transcript is available at the link below.)

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.