While American Jewry still identifies overwhelmingly with the Democratic party and the political left, Jewish support for the GOP has been gradually on the rise. Steven Windmueller notes that this is not a new phenomenon. From the founding of the republic until the early 20th century, U.S. Jews tended to be diverse in their political allegiances and counted in their ranks many prominent conservative voices:

During the closing decades of the 19th century and the early periods of the 20th, [some] American Jewish leaders not only voted their passions but also articulated a well-founded conservative political and economic philosophy. The late 1800s would see a number of Jewish business leaders embracing the notion of “sound money” and a commitment to align the dollar to the gold standard. Jacob H. Schiff (1847-1920), the community’s major philanthropist, embraced the Republican party, as he publicly supported “conservative methods” [and] feared “social revolution.” A staunch believer in the Puritan tradition and the “American dream,” Schiff lived, according to his biographers, “by a sense of duty and strict morality.”

Louis Marshall (1856-1929), the lawyer who played a central role in the formation of the American Jewish Committee, would invoke a socially conservative orientation in managing the Jewish affairs of this era. Marshall even considered it “unpatriotic” to desert the Republican party when, in 1912, so many other prominent Jewish leaders—including Jacob Schiff—voted for Woodrow Wilson. “I am absolutely convinced,” he wrote, “that the Republican party presents the only hope against the onslaught which is now in process against our cherished institutions.”

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.