Last year, American taxpayers sent $218 million in military assistance to Lebanon, and more than twice that amount in civilian aid. The purpose of this support is to strengthen the government in Beirut against Hizballah’s efforts to gain control over the country. But, as Tamara Berens explains, it’s too late:

On the eve of Lebanon’s 100th birthday [this year], the country defaulted on its debt of $1.2 billion. Facing a perilous financial crisis exacerbated by COVID-19, with a 70-percent decline in the value of its currency, Lebanon will look to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a multibillion-dollar bailout. As Hizballah tightens its grip on the Lebanese government—Prime Minister Hassan Diab is backed by Hizballah and welcomed Hizballah into his cabinet—it is time for the U.S., [as] the largest contributor to the IMF, to act. . . . The Trump administration has the duty and the capability to counter Hizballah’s influence in the country.

Instead, the United States thus far opts to provide unconditional aid to Lebanese institutions that only serve to strengthen Hizballah’s [dangerous] activities. Consider the Lebanese Armed Forces, [which] has not only stood by as Hizballah gained a preponderance of force in southern Lebanon—it has actively partnered with the Iran-backed group.

The U.S. cannot continue to pedal the importance of “sovereignty” and “territorial integrity” in Lebanon while contributing to Iranian ambitions that violate these promises. In this time of crisis in Lebanon, the U.S. should stand behind Lebanese protestors who are risking their lives to denounce Iranian encroachments on their country. The U.S. must not agree to an IMF bailout or future aid payments to the Lebanese miltary unless it receives assurances that Hizballah will not benefit from them.

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.