Jews over the centuries have recited many different public prayers for the governments under which they have lived, but the most widespread in modern times, which remains standard in Orthodox congregations today, is Hanoteyn t’shu’ah lam’lakhim (“He Who Gives Salvation to Kings”). Although this prayer seems like a statement of undiluted patriotic devotion, Jonathan Sarna suggests that it lends itself to esoteric interpretation:

Hanoteyn t’shu’ah itself is in many ways a subversive prayer. Its manifest language exudes Jewish loyalty and faithful allegiance. At the same time, its esoteric meaning, presumably recognized only by an elite corps of well-educated worshippers, hints at spiritual resistance, a cultural strategy well-known among those determined to maintain their self-respect in the face of religious persecution. So, for example, the prayer begins with a verse modified from Psalm 144:10: “You who give victory to kings, who rescue[d] His servant David from the deadly sword.” The next line of that psalm, not included in the prayer but . . . deeply revealing in terms of the prayer’s hidden meaning, reads: “Rescue me, save me from the hands of foreigners, whose mouths speak lies, and whose oaths are false.” . . .

[F]ollowing the American Revolution, the [text of the] prayer was radically depersonalized in the United States, based on the idea that the new nation honors “the office,” not “the man.” From then onward most American synagogues have prayed for the nation’s officeholders without naming them (“the president,” etc.), a totally different practice from that in other countries (including Great Britain and tsarist Russia) where kings and queens are (or were) commonly referred to by name. In the very first post-Revolutionary American siddur, printed in 1826, a distinction was even drawn between how Hanoteyn t’shu’ah should be recited “During the Sitting of Congress” and “During the Recess,” as if to underscore that members of Congress are only special (and worthy of being included in the prayer) when Congress is actually in session; otherwise, its members are fellow citizens along with everybody else.

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.