Mendes Cohen was born to Jewish immigrants in Richmond, VA in 1796; his family moved to Baltimore when he was a child. During the War of 1812, he fought in the Battle of Baltimore, made famous in the American national anthem. He later went into banking with his brothers, and became so successful that he retired at age 33, thereupon deciding to travel the world. Joe Sugarman writes:

Throughout [his travels, Cohen] kept a detailed journal and wrote letters home, telling of his experiences at the coronation of William IV, the funeral of George IV, as well as his somewhat uneasy introduction to [the] newly-elected Pope Gregory XVI: “To degrade myself as an individual . . . and submit to kiss the foot of any man was too revolting to the feelings of any American. I therefore presented myself . . . mentioning my name, Signore Cohen, un Americano . . . and made one of my best French bows, to which he reciprocated.”

Cohen became the first American citizen to receive permission from the Ottomans to visit Palestine, where he recorded the hardships of the Jews of Jerusalem: “The appearance of the synagogues is that of poverty as they are not allowed to build or add to their buildings without paying a large sum to the Turks.”

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.