For those already inclined toward materialism, the recent advancements in neuroscience—for instance, the ability of a surgeon to generate particular sensations by stimulating specific areas of the brain—show that there is nothing more to a human than millions of complexly organized cells. Materialists counterpose this conclusion to the allegedly discredited notion of the “soul” as an explanation for human consciousness and cognition. To William E. Carrol, however, neither materialism nor dualism “exhaust[s] the explanatory categories of the world”:

If we assume a materialist natural philosophy according to which there is not anything more to nature than material components, then we might very well conclude . . . that our thoughts are as material as the hearts beating inside our chests.

Another alternative, [however,] and a view that can incorporate what contemporary science discloses, can be found in the thought of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. For them, living things need to be understood in terms of material and immaterial principles: not that an organism is two separate substances joined together (dualism), but that there is more to an organism (indeed to any natural entity) than its material components. The very intelligibility of nature and of changes in nature calls for a view other than that set forth by materialism.

Organisms are real causes of what they do; they are not simply pushed and pulled about by extrinsic [mechanical] forces. But they cannot be real causes if they do not exist as real unified wholes. The source of that unity is other than the sum of material parts and processes.

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.