Early on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu banned U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering Israel. The apparent reason was that the two Muslim American and Democratic congresswomen refused to coordinate their trip with Israeli security officials. Even so, his decision is a poorly calculated one.

Make no mistake: Omar and Tlaib’s positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict are odious. To support a boycott movement against the world’s only Jewish state while ignoring far greater human suffering and abuses in countries like Syria, Somalia, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan is telling. So too is a willingness to ignore the reality of Israel’s security challenges. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are openly genocidal, the former in its founding covenant and the latter in its public statements. Mahmoud Abbas, now in the 15th year of his four-year presidential term, is a dictator whose vanity and corruption is the main factor to blame for the failure of Palestinians to prosper.