Last week Senator Bernie Sanders led twelve of his Democratic colleagues—including Elizabeth Warren, Dianne Feinstein, and Sheldon Whitehouse—in sending a formal letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, calling for action to alleviate the “humanitarian crisis” in the Gaza Strip and demanding the restoration of funding to the UN Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), which collaborates with terrorists, teaches anti-Semitic propaganda in its schools, and does nothing to resettle Palestinian refugees. Jonathan Tobin comments:

[The letter] described the so-called March of Return as a response to the blockade of the [Gaza] Strip being conducted by Israel and Egypt. It specifically and repeatedly mentioned the actions of “Israeli snipers” and cited inflated casualty figures produced by Hamas. But at no point did it make reference to the terrorist group itself or acknowledge its responsibility for what happens in Gaza, let alone note the ongoing international sanctions on an area that even the Europeans know is a terrorist haven with which normal commerce is impossible. . . .

Why did so many Senate Democrats deliberately ignore Hamas’s role in an effort that, as the name of the march indicated, had as its purpose an attempt to wipe out 70 years of history and destroy the Jewish state? . . . The only possible outcome of their appeal would be an influx of Iranian weapons and material that would allow Hamas to strengthen its fortifications and its ability to carry on its fight against Israel.

The unfortunate answer is that within the Democratic party, there is now a faction that not only fails to think clearly about terrorism and the reality of Hamas-run Gaza. This group also seeks to appeal to the intersectional left leading the “resistance” to U.S. President Donald Trump, and which falsely claims a connection between the Black Lives Matter movement and the Palestinian war on Israel.

Fortunately, not all Democrats agree, and this struggle will play out as America heads toward the 2020 presidential race, in which the party’s left wing will seek to assert its control of the party. If the Democrats are to remain a pro-Israel party, those who care about Israel’s survival must speak out against these senators and others on the left who serve as Hamas’s dupes. . . . Contrary to the assertions of Israel’s left-wing critics, the Sanders letter and the left-wing hypocrites who support it show that the coming battle will be not so much for the soul of the Jewish state as it is for that of the Democratic party.

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.