Even before the devastating explosion that left hundreds dead and thousands injured, and destroyed much of Beirut’s port and the surrounding neighborhood, Lebanon was in the midst of a crisis brought on by rampant corruption, financial collapse, and ineffective governance. Inseparable from this crisis, writes H.R. McMaster, is Hizballah, which has gained immense influence over the small country’s political system. McMaster argues that the resignation of Lebanon’s government, combined with the country’s need for international aid, has opened a chance for political reform:

Reform will be impossible unless the Lebanese people, with international support, reduce the political and military power of Hizballah. Designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Kingdom and several other countries, as well as the Arab League, it uses the corrupt sectarian system to block reforms that threaten its influence over Lebanon’s government, financial system, and illicit economy.

Now is the time for potential international donors to Lebanon to magnify the voices of the Lebanese people and make it clear that there can be no bailout of a government and financial system controlled by a terrorist proxy for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Although Hizballah is weakened politically and financially—because of the country’s poor economic state and banking woes that limit its ability to receive money from Iran—its militia controls parts of Lebanon crucial to threatening its southern neighbor, Israel.

As it did in 2006, it is possible that Iran will incite a war with Israel via Hizballah to distract from growing dissent at home and arrest Hizballah’s plummeting reputation in Lebanon. The United States, France, and like-minded countries can place conditions on aid designed to prevent war and reduce Hizballah’s ability to hold the Lebanese and Israeli people hostage.

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.