In 1970, Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, who had written the songs to Fiddler on the Roof, created another musical about a Jewish family—but this time about the Rothschilds, who became one of Europe’s wealthiest families in the early 19th century. Harnick collaborated in producing an updated version of the play, entitled Rothschild & Sons, now being performed in New York. Gabriela Geselowitz writes in her review:

Rothschild & Sons focuses on the family patriarch, Mayer Rothschild, and his origins as an ambitious young merchant living in the 18th-century Frankfurt ghetto. Anxious to make something of himself in a world that openly despises Jews, he marries, has five sons, and ultimately, by use of his quick wit and perseverance, transforms his family into an international banking empire—all while still looking for a way to tear down the ghetto walls.

This new production is surprisingly endearing, and . . . is leaner [than the original] in almost every way with a modest set, shrunken cast, and shortened running time. . . . Comparisons between Rothschild & Sons and Fiddler are inevitable, and these come to a head in the respective patriarchs. After all, both musicals use the lead’s familial relationships as an exploration of Jewishness. But while Tevye sees [traditional Jewish life as a source of] stability, Mayer Rothschild champs at the bit to leave the ghetto and join the larger world.

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.