Last Wednesday, a militia backed by Iran launched a salvo of rockets at a coalition military base in Iraq, killing two American and one British military personnel. Later that day, Iranian positions in Syria, close to the Iraqi border, were struck by unidentified aircraft, possibly belonging to the U.S. or Israel. Then, on Friday, American and British planes also attacked weapons depots belonging to Kataib Hizballah, the leading Iranian militia in Iraq. Taking stock of this latest round of fighting, Michael Knights urges Washington to adopt a strategy (not unlike Israel’s) for defending itself from Tehran’s aggression:

[The] strikes on Kataib Hizballah’s missile and rocket bases [likely occurred long after the group] had evacuated its valuable weapons. Iran’s militia proxies in Iraq can trade empty buildings or even two dozen of their own rank and file for three Anglo-American fatalities all day, every day. This is a game we will lose.

The right approach probably [involves] prompt, decisive, and unclaimed attacks . . . against some senior [Iran-backed] militia leaders in order to make others think very seriously about their personal future. But high-value leadership targets—which Iran and its militias do value—are generally not available to hit the day after Americans are killed: they are keeping their heads down.

Congress and the administration need to sit privately and agree to some ground rules for the use of military force that allow the U.S. military to delink the timing of deterrent strikes, so that we can strike the right targets when they become available, to deter militia attacks that are highly likely to come otherwise.

In parallel, the U.S. should toughen its mindset, quietly bringing the [equipment] into Iraq that it needs (i.e., Patriot missiles and anti-rocket close-in defenses) without further consultation with an Iraqi government that would rather adopt a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach. And finally, the U.S. should let the militias keep overreaching, keep showing their hand as would-be dictators under Iran’s control, while the U.S.-led coalition keeps helping Iraq to defeat Islamic State. This is a game we can win.

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.