In addition to its military interventions in Syria and Libya, the Kremlin has in the past few years increased its involvement in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, cultivating friendly relations with Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas, and the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad. These initiatives, writes Oved Lobel, are all part of Vladimir Putin’s quest to make his country the Middle East’s “indispensable intermediary.” Now Moscow has turned its sights on Lebanon:

[U]ntil the recent explosion in Beirut and subsequent resignation of the government, Russia was simply not a significant actor in Lebanon. The political vacuum that has now developed, and Moscow’s close relations with all sides, may have opened a door for Russian influence in Lebanese politics.

For instance, on August 17, the former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri sent an adviser to consult with Putin’s Middle East envoy Mikhael Bogdanov on future political developments in the country. Bogdanov also had phone conversations with Hariri, the Druze powerbroker Walid Jumblatt, and the Free Patriotic Movement’s Gebran Bassil, and met in Moscow with . . . an adviser to the Lebanese president Michel Aoun.

What will certainly help [Russia in gaining influence in the country] is its increasingly close partnership with France, which has taken the leading role in Lebanon after the Beirut explosion across a spectrum of political and military issues, as well as its alliance with Iran, Syria, and Hizballah, the most relevant actors in the country.

As Lebanon sets out to rebuild its capital, Russia, the only country to maintain close relations with every state and non-state actor involved, could become supreme arbiter as it effectively has in Syria and Libya.

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.