In 1893, a young nurse from Rochester, NY named Lillian Wald met with Jacob Schiff—then one of America’s leading financiers and the most prominent figure in New York City’s Jewish community—to discuss a proposal for a charitable organization that would deliver home medical care and training in self-help to the impoverished immigrant residents of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Impressed by Wald, Schiff helped her found the Visiting Nurses Service, initiating three decades of cooperation in philanthropic endeavors that would revolutionize the provision of assistance to the urban poor. Susan Hertog writes:

Jacob Schiff, the Frankfurt-born son of a financier from a long line of rabbinic sages, was a Jewish aristocrat with the thirst for knowledge of a talmudic scholar. . . . [Herself born] into a family of German-Jewish entrepreneurs, [Wald] understood the landscape of [Schiff’s] mind. She knew that first and foremost, he was an investor with his eye on the bottom line, and this attitude permeated all of his philanthropic endeavors. An immigrant of her parents’ generation, Schiff saw his generosity toward Jewish charities and institutions as integral to his gratitude to America for his economic success. As a strictly observant Jew, he believed it was his duty to give 10 percent of his income to his community—amounting to a very generous total. . . .

Hitherto, [however], Schiff had contributed to charities and organizations from above, acting both as fundraiser and treasurer, antiseptically if good heartedly, using his financial skills and personal connections to foster the acculturation and settlement of immigrants, predominantly but not exclusively Jewish. . . .

In the wake of [several] miscarried efforts [to alleviate the suffering of immigrant Jews], Wald’s vision of home nursing seemed to get to the heart of the problem—a community-based institution devoted to the needs of immigrants. Wald’s plans were focused and tangible, and her youth and resolve moved Schiff. Perhaps most important, he sensed that he could supervise, instruct, and sway her in a way that suited him and would achieve their common ends. Wald was smart and ambitious, open, unspoiled, and willing to learn. While this may seem paternalistic [to modern sensibilities], one must remember that it was unheard of in his social circles for a man to partner with a woman [in this sort of endeavor]. But Lillian Wald was like no other woman Jacob Schiff had ever met.

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.