After three years of negotiations between Jerusalem and Ottawa, three planeloads of sheep from British Columbia have arrived in Israel. These are no ordinary sheep, but an ancient breed known as “Jacob’s sheep,” as Melanie Lidman writes:

Genetic markings for the breed date back at least a few thousand years to the Middle East. The journey for the sheep began in ancient times and passed through North Africa. Moorish invaders later brought the breed to Spain, whence it came to England, where the animal was something of a trophy sheep. A number were brought to North America, originally for zoos and then later for commercial use.

The breed received the name “Jacob sheep” based on Genesis 30, where Jacob talks about leaving his father-in-law Laban’s home and taking part of the flock as his payment for years of service. “I will pass through all thy flock today, removing from thence every speckled and spotted one, and every dark one among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats; and of such shall be my hire,” he is quoted as saying in Genesis 30:32. . . .

But somewhere along the way, although the Jews returned to Israel, the uniquely speckled sheep did not return with them. . . . [T]he sheep has not been found in Israel for thousands of years.

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.