At a recent auction at Sotheby’s, collectors had a chance to purchase numerous items from the estate of Frank and Barbara Sinatra—among them, a kippah with the singer’s name crocheted on it. Amy Spiro writes:

A hand-crocheted kippah that once belonged to Frank Sinatra was auctioned off . . . for $9,375. . . . Sotheby’s estimated [it] would sell for $200-400, but the final bid was close to 25 times that amount. The auction house did not say who crocheted the kippah or how Frank came to own it. The description of the item, rather, noted that “Sinatra was a lifelong sympathizer with Jewish causes, and was awarded the Hollzer Memorial Award by the Los Angeles Jewish Community in 1949.” . . .

A separate item sold in the auction was the final script for a short 1945 film titled The House I Live In. The film, written by Sinatra and Albert Maltz, was designed to combat anti-Semitism and promote religious freedom in America.

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.