Former Israeli ambassador to the UN Dore Gold speaks about the possibility of renewed negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel’s relations with Arab countries, the Iranian nuclear threat, and the absurdity of the attack on Netanyahu for accepting an invitation to speak to the U.S. Congress. On the subject of borders, Gold comments:

Many people forget that Israel was never required to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines—which are often misnamed “the 1967 borders.” It was the UN Security Council Resolution 242, adopted in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, which stated explicitly that Israel was expected to withdraw from “territories” and not from all the territories. The common understanding of the U.S. and the UK at the time was that there had to be an Israeli withdrawal, but it wouldn’t have to be a full withdrawal. . . . Israel received assurances from successive US administrations that it was entitled to defensible borders that would replace the fragile pre-1967 lines from which it was attacked more than 40 years ago. . . .

Israel has to negotiate a new border with the Palestinians. . . . In the context of negotiating those new borders, Israel will seek ways to assure that, at the end of the day, it will have secure boundaries that are defensible, given the multiple threats mushrooming around Israel at present, from Islamic State to Iran.

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.