The British-born journalist Dina Gold, descended on her mother’s side from a family of German fur-coat manufacturers, took it upon herself to discover what became of their large office building in downtown Berlin. Upon driving the Jewish-owned Wolff Furs out of business, the Nazis had forced the sale of the building; after the war it was inherited by East Germany and then by the unified Federal Republic. Gold relates her family history and the story of her attempt at receiving restitution in what is, according to Josh Gelernter, a gripping book:

The real story begins with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Dina Gold . . . decided to have a look at her family’s building, and as the newly unified Germany opened up to reparation claims, she persuaded her mother to try to establish ownership. As might be expected, the German authorities were not especially helpful. First, they tried to prove that the Wolffs had sold their building voluntarily to the Nazis. Then they sought to prove that the building didn’t exist anymore: a communicating door had been built in the wall it shared with an adjacent building; this, it was claimed, made the two structures one entirely new building. Then they tried to prove that because the building had been “altered” since it was confiscated, it was no long subject to the laws of restitution. They also contested the validity of the Wolffs’ wills.

Fortunately, Dina Gold was able to find a few good Germans to help her, but they had to fight an uphill battle. How did it turn out? I won’t spoil it for you.

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.