A teacher at a school for Jewish girls in Budapest run by the Church of Scotland, Jane Haining refused orders from her superiors to leave Hungary when World War II began. Eventually she was sent to Auschwitz, where she died. Some of her last correspondence was recently discovered in church archives, shedding new light on the details of her story:

Despite being under surveillance, [Haining] managed to keep the children safe for four years until she was betrayed by the cook’s son-in-law, whom she caught eating scarce food intended for the girls. She was arrested by two Gestapo officers—they gave her fifteen minutes to gather her belongings—and charged with eight offenses. She was accused of working among the Jews; weeping when seeing the girls attend class wearing the yellow stars; dismissing her housekeeper; listening to news broadcasts on the BBC; having many British visitors; being active in politics; visiting British prisoners of war; and sending British prisoners of war parcels.

The church has a translation of the last letter Miss Haining wrote—a missive written in German and in pencil to Margit Prem, the Hungarian head teacher who ran the Scottish Mission in Budapest, on a letter-form headed “Konzenstrationslager Auschwitz.” It is dated July15, 1944—two days before she died—and is mainly concerned with the welfare of others, food, and the practical details of the school.

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.