In January, the New York State Senate passed a bill—now being considered by the state Assembly—which would prohibit New York from doing business with corporations that support the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel (BDS). Benjamin Weinthal and Asaf Romirowsky explain the bill’s importance:

Nearly half of U.S. states have passed anti-BDS resolutions or laws. New York’s law will be crucial because scores of major European companies and banks are based in the Empire State. The mere threat of legislation penalizing European banks has prompted one major bank to shut down an Austrian BDS group’s account: the Vienna-based financial-services provider Erste Group closed the account held by BDS Austria.

After the Jerusalem Post exposed a BDS account held by the DAB Bank in Munich—a subsidiary of the French banking giant BNP Paribas—the account of BDS Campaign in Germany was [also] closed.

Both BNP Paribas and Erste Group have branch offices in New York City. German, Austrian, and French banks maintaining BDS accounts are now likely to face greater scrutiny by New York State legislators. . . .

European companies and financial institutions will need to make hard decisions. Do they want to continue to stoke anti-Semitism via BDS and hurt Israel’s economy while facing financial damage to their businesses in the United States? It should be a no-brainer.

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.