Senator Marco Rubio (or his staff) is in the habit of tweeting biblical verses on a near-daily basis; lately most of these have come from the book of Proverbs. In response, a Yale Divinity School professor of Hebrew Bible penned an essay explaining that this book of Solomonic aphorisms is “the most Republican part of the Bible” and reflects “an almost social-Darwinist worldview.” Charlotte Allen points out that, in fact, Proverbs is “not all diligence and righteousness—in Proverbs, faith in God, too, will keep you away from things like poverty and failure.” Then she proceeds to have some fun at the professor’s expense:

All of this set me to wondering: if the book of Proverbs is the most Republican book in the Bible, what’s the most Democratic book? So I scoured the Good Book and came up with some candidates: . . .

The book of Ruth: “And Naomi had a kinsman of her husband’s, a mighty man of wealth, of the family of Elimelech; and his name was Boaz. And Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi, Let me now go to the field, and glean ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find grace. And she said unto her, Go, my daughter” (Ruth 2:1-2).

A whole congeries of Democratic party themes here, from grabbing what you can from the rich via sky-high taxes to the welfare state (free food!) to possibly illegal immigration (what is Ruth the Moabitess doing in the land of Israel?).

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.