For the past eighteen months, Israel’s ultra-Orthodox parties have succeeded in holding up the implementation of a compromise approved by the Netanyahu government that would create a mixed-sex prayer area at the Western Wall. Yesterday, ḥaredi members of the cabinet, with minimal opposition, managed to “freeze” the plan by threatening to leave the governing coalition. Counting himself among those angered over the failure of this compromise, Shmuel Rosner gives some sober advice to those who feel similarly. To Rosner, the underlying fact is that ḥaredi politicians have significant electoral clout and believe this issue to be of the utmost importance; few Jews in the Diaspora, and even fewer in Israel, feel the same way:

Do not confuse the interests of small groups in Israel with those of large groups in the U.S. I have enormous respect for the dedication and determination of Women of the Wall. I still wonder if their cause—the cause of relatively few women—justifies the means—a rift separating millions of Jews from one another. . . .

The prime minister might be a coward for not testing how far the Ḥaredim will go in their insistence on killing the compromise. But it is not surprising that most of those thinking he should have taken the risk are also those who don’t want his government to survive. . . .

Do not try to convince Israelis—not even me—that the Western Wall issue is the most urgent issue on Israel’s agenda. It is not. . . . [Most non-ultra-Orthodox] Israelis dislike the [official] rabbinate and have little respect for ḥaredi leaders. They are less willing to fight for the Wall compromise not because they fear the rabbis or do not [believe] that the rabbis hurt Israel. They do not fight for the Kotel because it is not important enough for them to fight for. Also note that the rabbis are generally smart: they don’t take away from Israelis those things Israelis truly value—such as soccer on Saturdays.

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.