First published in serial form in 1903, the great Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem’s novella Moshkele the Thief is the story of the eponymous village Jew—“a thief and the son of a thief”—who, as a child, freed himself both from his father’s discipline and from schooling when he “pulled an iron horseshoe from his pocket and snapped it in two, like one breaks a bagel.” Herewith, an excerpt from Curt Leviant’s new translation of the opening chapters:

[Moshkele’s] feats of strength were famous not only in Mazepevke but in all the surrounding villages. It was known that Moshke could wrestle three soldiers and singlehandedly beat and pummel six men so badly blood would run. In brief, he wasn’t easily forgotten.

Even at the tender age of thirteen, Moshke made his mark a few times, showing what he could do with his fists. The Mazepevke peasant lads, who almost every Sabbath picked fights with the Jewish boys as they took their Sabbath strolls along the streets, would sic their dogs on them, chase them, hoot at them, call them “Yids,” and taunt them with anti-Semitic ditties. But once they got the taste of Moshke’s fists they spread the word not to start up with that Jew. And later, when Moshke grew and became a young man, the adult peasants too felt Moshke’s paws and were scared to death of him.

One can say that getting into fights was a kind of wild passion for Moshke, an irresistible impulse, and he loved starting up with someone bigger and stronger than him. . . . In short, when it came to blows, clouts and punches, he had achieved renown. And I’ll even say that at fisticuffs Moshke was a genius.

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.