In the early 14th century, an ongoing controversy over the work of Moses Maimonides—or more generally over the relationship between philosophy and Judaism—flared up in the southern French region of Languedoc. Unlike previous episodes in which anti-Maimonideans challenged the acceptability of any study of Gentile philosophy, this one, which took place mainly among his admirers, concerned the line dividing acceptable philosophical interpretations of the Bible from outright heresy. Defending the Maimonidean position was the great scholar Menaḥem ha-Meiri. Gregg Stern writes:

Meiri records his community’s commitment to philosophy and the sciences as a change in orientation resulting from the 1204 publication of the Hebrew translation (from Arabic) by Samuel ibn Tibbon of [Maimonides’] Guide of the Perplexed.

In Meiri’s view, Maimonides had enlightened the Jews of Languedoc, and had invited them to integrate Greco-Arabic learning into their curriculum of Torah study; they had done so admirably, without harm to their talmudic studies. After four or five generations—by Meiri’s day—many Languedocian Jews had [accepted] this broader curriculum as a cultural ideal. Meiri emphasizes that the success of Languedocian talmudists with philosophic study had exercised no deleterious effect upon them.

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.