Although Arthur Balfour and Winston Churchill, both Tories, famously supported Zionism, Britain’s Conservative party has a long history of chilly relations with the Jewish state; only in recent years has it become decidedly more pro-Israel than its rivals. Alan Mendoza traces the gradual change in British Conservatives’ attitudes:

[T]he explanation for the transformation of the Conservatives . . . can be linked to Prime Minister David Cameron’s own evolving views on foreign policy. . . . As early as 2008, when Russia went to war with Georgia, Cameron not only—presciently as it turned out—argued for strong opposition to Russia’s behavior but went as far as to visit Tbilisi in a show of solidarity. . . . When Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons to massacre his own people in August 2013, it was once again Cameron who led calls for a military response, although in this case he was stymied by a reluctant House of Commons. His increased support for Israel can be seen as a corollary of this general assertiveness, particularly in the context of the fallout from the Arab Spring. . . .

Of course, there remain other voices in the Conservative party today. The party’s old “Arabist” wing remains alive and well, led by MPs such as Sir Nicholas Soames, Sir Alan Duncan, and Crispin Blunt. . . . Dissenting voices are still raised in Middle East debates and over Middle East policy. Yet the striking fact is how few these voices are when compared to the past, and how far removed they are from the position of the party’s leadership. . . .

All this does not amount to some illicit “neoconservative” seizure of the Conservative party, as [some journalists have] alleged. . . . Rather it reflects a more mature and reasoned viewpoint on the benefits of alliance with Israel. British MPs and leaders do not support Israel on account of activities of lobby groups or parochial voting concerns but because they have concluded it is in the national interest to do so.

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.