In the past weeks, Palestinian leaders from both Fatah and Hamas have been inciting their people to violence with claims that Israel is planning to change the “status quo” on the Temple Mount. By this they mean the longstanding policy that gives administrative control of the area to Muslim religious authorities, allows unrestricted access to Muslims, and restricts Jewish access. But, argues Nadav Shragai, the “status quo” is no status quo at all. The areas designated for Muslim prayer have expanded, and Jews, long forbidden from praying there, are now sharply curtailed even from visiting. At the heart of the problem is Israel’s reluctance to enforce its laws:

Amid ongoing [Muslim] damage to antiquities, blatant violations of the laws on planning, construction, and antiquities on the Mount, and repeated appeals to Israel’s supreme court by different [Jewish] groups, as well as political activity by members of Knesset and other public figures, constant tension has arisen between the Muslim religious authorities and the state of Israel concerning the enforcement of Israeli law on the Temple Mount.

In response, the state has entrusted the attorney general and a special ministerial committee to decide on issues related to law enforcement in the compound. The ministerial committee has not convened for many years, and was reactivated only a few years ago. The attorney general is very cautious about applying Israeli law to the Temple Mount and sometimes has even refrained from doing so, preferring to deal with this issue through unofficial dialogue with the Muslims via the Israel police. The police, for their part, have often preferred to keep things quiet on the Temple Mount even if the “price” entails compromising the rule of law, damage to antiquities, or violating planning and construction laws.

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.