Turkey’s present-day capital was once home to a thriving Jewish community, albeit never one as large or prominent as those in Istanbul and Izmir. Leyla Algamaz, who emigrated from there to Israel in 1971, recalls her childhood in the 1940s and 50s. (Interview by Dora Niyego.)

The Jews of Ankara were not very observant; we tried to perform rituals to the best of our abilities. The most important tradition was to attend the synagogue, which we called the kal. If they had to work [on Shabbat], community members would make sure to attend synagogue in the morning, then attend to their businesses. On Friday evenings, men returning early from work would change to their Shabbat clothes and attend services.

Friday-night meals were always better and different [from those served on] other nights. [There was always] delicious food and a meticulously set dinner table. Every woman knew that her husband could come back from services with guests. If anyone was in Ankara due to business or military service and attended the synagogue, he could be sure that he would be invited over to dinner. . . .

Volunteers in the community would help the needy, visit the sick, and offer support and attend to families with members on their death beds as well as [perform the ritual purification of the deceased]. These ladies would perform their duties willingly and sincerely.

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.