On August 6, terrorists in the Gaza Strip began launching incendiary devices at Israeli towns, triggering IDF retaliation and a series of attacks and counterattacks that ended with a ceasefire on Monday. Alex Fishman examines where the weeks of violence leave Hamas:

During the three weeks [of violence] Israel closed the land and ocean passageways into the Strip [and] the number of unemployed there jumped by no less than 10 percent, as thousands lost their jobs and their livelihoods. Neither Yahya Sinwar, [the senior Hamas figure in the Strip], nor his people can bury these numbers with mere words. This last round of violence against Israel was a colossal failure for him and his people. . . . Sinwar tried to force Israel to the negotiating table in an effort to improve life in the Strip. He succeeded insofar as Israel indeed negotiated with Hamas through Egypt, Qatar, and the UN.

But what Hamas failed to do was to extract any concessions from either Jerusalem or from his interlocutors.

In the end, not only did Sinwar find himself back at square one, but the IDF used the attacks as an excuse to strike no less than 104 Hamas-affiliated targets within the enclave, thus delivering a blow to the organization’s infrastructure in the Strip.

About a week ago, Gaza was hit by its own wave of coronavirus, a new development that may have pushed Sinwar to end the current round of aggression. . . . The Strip is under complete lockdown at the moment, no movement is permitted from district to district, and schools and beaches are closed, [as are all] exits from the Strip. . . . Even if Israel wanted to throw Gaza an economic lifeline, the coronavirus has made it all but impossible.

The way the latest escalation ended is nothing but an invitation to the next round, which may end up being more violent.

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.