After 1948, although most ultra-Orthodox leaders reached some accommodation with the newfound Jewish state, Neturei Karta, the most extreme anti-Zionist group, persisted in its complete rejection of Israel. This movement was rocked by scandal in 1965 when its longtime leader Amram Blau married Ruth Ben-David, a French convert to Judaism nearly 26 years his junior—despite a rabbinical court’s order not to proceed. When he defied the court, his followers turned against him; his movement fractured and went into decline. As Yair Ettinger writes, Blau’s newly opened personal archive reveals much about this unlikely union:

In the boxes comprising Blau’s private archive [are] documents, wall posters, private correspondence relating to the wedding, and Ben-David’s k’tubah (marriage contract). Born to Catholic parents in France as Madeleine Feraille, Ben-David (1920-2000) played an active role in the French resistance during World War II, attended university, married, and gave birth to a son. It was only at that point in her life that she began to show a deep interest in Judaism. In 1952, she converted and divorced her husband. . . .

[I]n 1962, she assisted in smuggling out of Israel an Israeli child, Yossele Schumacher, who was kidnapped and taken abroad by his grandparents with Neturei Karta’s help. The grandparents had abducted the child in defiance of a court order: they wanted to continue raising him as an ultra-Orthodox Jew in light of the fact that his parents were no longer religious. Interrogated by Israeli security officials, Ben-David broke down and the Mossad found the child, who was returned to Israel and his parents’ care. In Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community, Ben-David became a heroine and was thus much sought after as a prospective match. . . .

On the night of September 2, 1965, the wedding was held in a Bnei Brak yeshiva, in the presence of 30 guests. “Rabbi Amram marries the convert in a midnight wedding ceremony,” reported Yediot Aḥronot in its banner headline. The entire country . . . already knew who “Rabbi Amram” was and the identity of the “convert.”

In the view [of the researcher Kimmy Kaplan], Blau did not know in advance what price he would pay for his decision to marry Ben-David.

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.