Michael Sarel, who recently stepped down as chief economist at Israel’s Treasury Ministry, speaks about the challenges facing Israel’s economy, the political roadblocks that prevent improvements, and the dangers of over-regulation. (Interview by Amnon Lord and Akiva Bigman)

The populism contest [among politicians] is the primary obstacle to a fundamental improvement in Israel’s economic situation. According to Dr. Sarel, since the days of Netanyahu’s reforms in 2003-2005 when he served as Treasury Minister, Israel has not had an economic policy that deals with fundamentally changing the situation but only one dealing with the symptoms of the present one. “Very often, there are very attractive ideas which ostensibly deal with the problems in the economy,” he says, “and they have good visibility. On the macro level they seem to solve the problems, but when you properly examine these cures, you understand that the negative results are greater than the positive ones.”

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.