Over the summer, two prominent U.S. churches—the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ—adopted resolutions condemning the Jewish state for its real or imagined treatment of Palestinians. Both resolutions draw heavily on a document, produced by Palestinian Christians in 2009, called Kairos Palestine. Taking its name from the Greek word meaning “an opportune moment,” this document is nothing more than anti-Israel propaganda. Robert Leikind explains:

[Kairos Palestine] reduces the complex, painful history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to a single word: “occupation.” Information that might contradict [its] far-reaching [conclusions] is ignored. Gone from the historical narrative are Arab armies massed at Israel’s borders poised to destroy the country; . . . acts of terror that have caused thousands of Israeli casualties; thousands of missiles that followed Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza; and repeated calls by Palestinian religious, civic, and political leaders to reject peaceful coexistence with Israel on any terms. . . .

Kairos Palestine’s argument is not only political but also theological. It declares that “the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is a sin against God and humanity.” Israel, it states, is the “enemy” who stands in opposition to God himself. Its “occupation,” according to Kairos Palestine, “is an evil that must be resisted.”

The document portrays the struggle between Palestinians and Israelis as one between “good” (Christian, Palestinian) and “evil” (Jewish, Israeli), between those who lift up God’s name and those who profane it. Palestinians and Israelis are each assigned their roles in this carefully choreographed drama, which, regrettably, bears a striking resemblance to storylines used to demonize Jews in past eras.

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.