Raki, an anise-flavored liquor (similar to arak or ouzo), was a favorite beverage of Sephardim living in Turkey, Greece, and Bulgaria. Since it is generally made from raisins—i.e., dried grapes—it requires special kosher supervision, so Jews often made their own. Eugene Normand and Albert S. Maimon relate the history of Jewish raki production in the Old World and the New:

One of the keys to the hallowed status of raki over the generations is the fact that it was usually made at home, with a home-made still, by the few men in the community to whom the brewing art was known, having been handed down by brewers of the previous generations. . . . One of the famous raki makers of the 19th century was in fact a rabbi, Meir Jacob Nahmias, who produced fine-quality raki in the city of Salonika on a commercial scale. Apparently his production secrets were passed down to his children. . . .

When the Ottoman Sephardim began immigrating to the United States, those who had the knowledge of how to make the raki set up shop on these shores. We see this very clearly in the experiences of the Turkish Sephardim who settled in Seattle. . . . All of these men, and some of the women too, loved their raki, so in short order those men who knew how to make the raki set up shop in their own homes and began producing because there was a large customer base waiting for the product.

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.