On January 29, the Islamic State-affiliated terrorist group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis carried out a sophisticated attack in the Sinai, killing 32 people. Egypt is now engaged in a war with the group. The escalation has serious consequences for Israel, writes Yoram Schweitzer:

Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis has carried out attacks against Israel in the past, including the attack on Highway 12, which leads to Eilat; firing of rockets at Eilat before and during Operation Protective Edge; and sending a suicide bomber to the Kerem Shalom border crossing, who was killed by the Egyptians before he could carry out his plan. These events, along with the group’s close ties with organizations active in the Gaza Strip . . . strengthen the common Israeli-Egyptian interest on this issue. The two countries have an even greater common interest, given the explicit declarations by Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis that it will continue to operate directly against Israel.

Escalation in the Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis struggle against Israel could be a complex challenge for IDF soldiers and Israeli citizens. The group has great—and proven—military capability, and its attacks are carried out by squads with many participants, sometimes between ten and several dozen heavily armed attackers equipped with rockets, mortars, rocket launchers, and missiles. It has also made use of suicide tactics. . . . It is even possible that it will [act] under the guidance of Islamic State, which, according to a speech by [its leader Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi in January 2015, depicts Israel as a partner and assistant of the international coalition fighting against it in Syria and Iraq.

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.