The story of Passover, writes Yossi Prager, is one of “the increasing revelation of God’s hand in history.” Abraham Lincoln—who was killed on Passover—was a firm believer in the principle of divine providence, and searched for the presence of that divine hand in the unfolding of the Civil War:

President Lincoln believed in the justice of the Union’s cause and also thought the Union army to be the stronger force. He expected a faster war. Yet God seemed to will the war to continue. Why? . . . Lincoln chewed over the question until he believed he had found an answer—one that satisfied his theological questions as well as his political need to bind the North and South together. . . . .

God, argued Lincoln, held both the North and the South responsible for slavery in America, and drew blood “with the sword” as retribution for “blood drawn with the lash.” Why? Because all thirteen [original] colonies [had] permitted slavery. Slavery may have been abolished in the North earlier than in the South, but Lincoln viewed that as due in large measure to differences in the economies of the two sections of America. The North and South each had its own purposes for the war, but God had a larger purpose.

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.