The use of the term “Palestinian” to describe the Arab inhabitants of the Land of Israel originated only after 1948; previously, they were known simply as “Arabs.” Thereafter, a distinctive Palestinian national movement began to take shape; its key principle, argues Aaron Kliegman, was hatred of Israel:

Arab leaders, and even the Palestinian Arabs themselves, did not seriously seek to create a Palestinian state between 1949 to 1967, during which time Jordan controlled the West Bank and Egypt occupied Gaza. That was the best time to establish an independent Palestine, but no one tried, because Palestinian nationalism did not really exist. Egypt did create an “All-Palestine Government,” but it was short-lived and . . . a façade for Egyptian control. More importantly, no one thought of the government as an expression of Palestinian nationalism. Nonetheless, Palestinian Arabs still launched numerous terrorist attacks against Israel during this time and worked with Arab governments to destroy the Jewish state.

[O]nly in 1964, when the Palestine Liberation Organization was established, did the world begin to refer widely to these Arabs as “Palestinians.” . . . A Palestinian people exists today, but that people, that nation, emerged historically as an opposition movement against Israel, offering no vision other than destroying Israel.

Just look at Palestinian society today. Put aside Gaza, which endures . . . under the suffocating rule of Hamas, an Islamist terrorist organization. Focus instead on the supposedly moderate, more responsible Palestinian Authority, which rules the West Bank, where streets, mosques, stadiums, and even summer camps are named after terrorists who murdered Israelis. Such butchers are glorified in every direction, revealing how Palestinians have chosen to build their identity. There is nothing distinctly Palestinian other than . . . “resistance” against Israel—steeped in hate.

The Palestinians need to have an identity crisis, to look inward and to question who they are and what Palestinian nationality really entails. They should feel insecure about creating a national identity whose only clear pillar is blindly opposing Israel.

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.