The British police are considering ceasing to use such terms as “Islamist” and “jihadi” in internal discussions of Islamist and jihadist terrorism. Liam Duffy comments:

Unsurprisingly, this parochial debate did not exactly strike fear into the hearts of terrorists. . . . According to critics of the word, “Islamism” should be dropped because it conflates religious belief with terror. But the term, [in contradistinction to] “Islamic,” is intended to draw a distinction between the political ideology and the religious beliefs of more than two million Britons. It is important though to understand how religion informs the political ideology. Which it does, significantly.

When innocent people are gunned down in European capitals and minorities are persecuted in the Middle East, it is of the utmost importance to understand why this is happening. We need to know that we are not simply dealing with a band of malcontents or the vulnerable, but a distinct and coherent violent program which, as repugnant as it may be, should be respected and understood as an opponent.

Perhaps the most overlooked people in this debate are the formidable Muslims standing up to Islamism every single day across the country. Making Islamism more of a taboo than it already is would undo so much of their hard work, and would be a frustrating betrayal of brave men and women who need our support.

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.