According to the cease-fire agreement that ended the summer’s war, as well as the preconditions set by the states pledging to reconstruct Gaza, Hamas is to relinquish partial control of the strip to the Palestinian Authority. But the two have proved unable or unwilling to cooperate. As a result, only a small fraction of the billions of dollars in earmarked aid has been delivered, while buildings destroyed in the fighting remain in ruins. Israel seems to be the one party interested in helping, while Hamas is contemplating another war. Neri Zilber writes:

Israel, of all the parties involved, has shown the greatest degree of flexibility toward a Gaza Strip still ruled by Hamas. In addition to acquiescing in the salary payments, Israel has begun easing restrictions on construction materials and other goods entering the territory, and on certain products (fish, cucumbers) and people exiting. Israel has given its consent to an elaborate UN-led inspection mechanism for reconstruction, which . . . has not yet begun in earnest due to the lack of a PA presence on the ground. “I can’t say that it’s because of Israel that there has been no movement [on reconstruction] at present,” [a] senior UN official said, a sentiment shared by several other foreign diplomats I spoke to in Jerusalem. . . .

Sheikh Mahmoud Musleh, a senior Hamas leader in the West Bank whom I spoke to, had no illusions about the purpose of the new squeeze around his group. “What they are seeking is the end of Hamas military power in the Gaza Strip,” he observed. “This is the main impediment [to reconciliation with the PA].” When I inquired whether his group would consider laying down their arms for the greater welfare of the Gazan people, the answer was definitive: “This is impossible.”

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.