Just as there were numerous instances of Christians rescuing Jews during World War II—sometimes at great risk to their own lives—there were also instances of Muslims doing the same. Robert Satloff recounts the story of a Tunisian bathhouse-proprietor who rescued his Jewish friend Joseph Naccache when the Nazis occupied their country:

Hamza Abdul Jalil knew that it was a dangerous moment for the Jews of his neighborhood. When the roundup of Jews began, Hamza told Joseph [Naccache] that if he ever needed a place to hide, he should come to the hammam (Turkish-style bathhouse). When Joseph began to fear that the German dragnet was closing in, he took Hamza up on his offer. For two weeks, Hamza protected him deep inside the labyrinth of the hammam, providing refuge and food, so that Joseph could evade his pursuers. Hamza neither requested nor accepted any payment.

After he left the hammam for another hiding place, Joseph was eventually captured by the Germans and sent to labor camps in the Tunisian hinterland. A lifetime later, he still remembered the kindness of the proprietor of the local hammam.

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.