Amin Haj al-Husseini, who was appointed “grand mufti” of Jerusalem in 1921, gained infamy for his violent opposition to Zionism and his friendship with Heinrich Himmler. Boris Havel argues that Husseini also played an important role in bringing anti-Semitism to the Muslim world through such wartime works as the pamphlet Islam and Judaism:

[T]he pamphlet introduces [new ideas] into Islamic political discourse regarding the Jews. By combining the Islamic canon with pre-Christian and Christian anti-Judaism, it . . . [portrays Jews] as far more cunning and successful in their vicious designs than previous mainstream Islamic thought had recognized. . . . [One] example of this anti-Jewish eclecticism can be found in the mufti’s accusation that Jews brought plague to Arabia. This statement evokes medieval European myths with similar themes. . . .

[T]he mufti . . . traces Jewish accomplishments of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s . . . to supposed Jewish activities at the time of Muhammad. In doing so, he created a precedent later followed by prominent Islamic actors in the Middle East and elsewhere, particularly after Israel’s stunning military victories over its Arab adversaries. Thus Hamas accuses the Jews of “wiping out the Islamic caliphate” by starting World War I, starting the French and the Communist revolutions, establishing “clandestine organizations,” and [employing their] financial power to colonize, exploit, and corrupt countries.

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.