In the battle against IS, military force is necessary along with police efforts to stop recruitment. But these steps are insufficient, argues Elliott Abrams. Opponents of IS must also understand its appeal for young Muslims, and persuade them that theirs is a false dream:

IS holds an ideological appeal for some young Muslims, and we need to identify and counter it to defeat the group. We see it as a despicable, medieval group that engages in beheadings, uses women as sex slaves, and embraces endless violence. Such facts are often denied by young Arabs attracted to IS, who believe these accounts of IS brutality are manufactured by Western governments. Instead they see something very positive. In part it is simply an escape from poverty or a life without opportunity and purpose. But it’s also more . . . IS represents for them an opportunity to build a true Islamic society and state. In this ideal state, sharia would be the law of the land, Muslims would make their own way, foreign powers would be excluded, and justice would prevail. Government would not allow European or American interference, and the state and society would truly be theirs and would reflect their own values more purely. Instead of being marginal, lost figures in European societies or Arab states, they would be at the heart of an historic effort to build a new and just society. Of course this is all false.

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.