While Turkey has given quiet support to various forces opposed to Bashar al-Assad since the civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, last week was the first time Turkish and Syrian troops fought each other directly—with exchanges of fire leaving soldiers on both sides dead. Jonathan Spyer considers whether the confrontation between the two will escalate, and how Russia will respond:

It is undoubtedly the case that the Syrian regime’s attack on Turkish personnel is a blow to Russian diplomacy. Since emerging as the key diplomatic arbiter in Syria following its entrance into the conflict in September 2015, Russia has sought to maintain cordial relations with a variety of warring sides: Israel and Iran, Turkey and the [Kurdish] PKK militia, Turkey and the Syrian government.

[But the recent clashes] need not mean the general collapse of Russian mediation and diplomacy. Israel has killed Iranian personnel [in Syria] on numerous occasions during its air raids over the last three years, [despite the presence of] Russian air defenses . . . on Syrian soil. [Likewise], the Syrian Kurds have been severely let down by Moscow on a number of occasions, as a result of the Russian strategic goal of inducing Turkey away from its alliance with the United States.

Yet these undoubted Russian betrayals did not result in a wholesale turning away from Moscow on the part of either the Iranians or the Syrian Kurds. On the contrary, both these forces need their relationship with Russia to provide at least a part of what they want. Without the presence of Russia, Israel’s actions against Iran in Syria would likely be far more intense. Russia, meanwhile, prevented a catastrophic [Turkish attack on Kurds] on a larger scale.

Russia, because of the U.S. decision to avoid major engagement in the Syrian war, has emerged both as the decisive military factor and consequently as the main diplomatic force in the country. Since everyone needs it to get anything done, and since there is no alternative patron available, Moscow remains the indispensable partner for all.

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.