The leaders of Fatah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas and their respective media outlets have been spewing violent rhetoric and publishing horrifying cartoons that celebrate the killing of women and children. In the Palestinian press, what began as the “children’s intifada” is now being hailed as the “car intifada.” Secretary of State John Kerry and the rest of the Obama administration would be well advised to take this blatant incitement into consideration. Khaled Abu Toameh writes:

The Obama administration would do well to understand that it is a waste of time to talk about any peace process when Palestinian leaders and activists are openly glorifying those who use their vehicles to kill Israelis. The Obama administration is talking about reviving the peace process while Abbas is telling his people that Jews are “desecrating” the holy sites in Jerusalem and praising an assassin as a “hero” and “martyr.” . . .

[I]t would also be a good idea for Obama and Kerry to go online and view the most recent Palestinian campaigns that encourage and applaud terror attacks on Israelis. Perhaps then they will understand that as long as the incitement continues, there is no chance—zero—for the success of any peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

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.