Today (on the Hebrew calendar) is the anniversary of the death of Haym Salomon, a Polish-born American Jew who single-handedly raised most of the funds necessary to back the Continental army. And his devotion to the revolutionary cause did not end there, as Gershon Tannenbaum writes:

Arriving in colonial America in 1772, [Salomon] established himself in New York as a respected and well-liked merchant. . . . Haym enthusiastically joined the Sons of Liberty, a secret organization that had been established by men with business interests who were opposed to British rule. Haym was arrested by the British and charged with spying in September 1776, an offense punishable by hanging. His [linguistic] skills caught the attention of his captors and he was assigned to German General Heister.

As an interpreter for Heister, Salomon was allowed a relatively high degree of freedom. He contributed to the American revolutionary cause by persuading Hessian [mercenaries] to switch sides. . . .

Salomon continued [after his release] to work underground to sway Hessian allegiance, and was jailed a second time in August 1778 as one of several suspects thought to be planning a fire that would destroy the British royal fleet in New York harbor.

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.