Doctors, writes Aaron Rothstein, have a penchant for dark humor, cracking jokes in the face of death, suffering, and disease. Rothstein turns to the history of Jewish comedy to understand why this is so:

Ruth Wisse . . . wrestles with the idea of tragic humor in No Joke, her wonderful 2013 book on Jewish humor. Professor Wisse notes that during tumultuous times, Jewish humor flourished because of “an increased need for entertainment that would distract or temporarily release the tension, and offer consolation.” One Jewish comedian in particular, Shimon Dzigan, exemplified this concept during the early 20th century in Eastern Europe, playing characters on stage in sketches which poked fun at local Polish political figures and even German leaders. In explaining why he sought humor in dark times, Dzigan explained, “I have no answer. I can only say that perhaps because we subconsciously felt that our verdict was sealed and our fate unavoidable, we consciously wished to shout it down and drown it out. With effervescent joy we wanted to drive off the gnawing sadness, the dread and fear that nested deep inside us.”

Indeed, there is a gaping chasm between how those who joke about serious matters actually feel and what they laugh about. The laughing isn’t merely a cover for their feelings but a way of making those feelings less unpleasant and less controlling.

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.