Neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardi, Italian Jews have a distinctive history, and even their own liturgy—although by modern times most of the country’s congregations had adopted the Sephardi rite. Italian Jewry in fact predates the other Jewish communities of Europe, although from the Middle Ages on it was shaped by waves of immigration from elsewhere. Alexander Beider examines what can be learned about Italian Jews from their surnames:

The ancestors of Italian Jews lived on the Apennine peninsula for many centuries, where at least some of them have lived since Roman times. . . . Legend has it that the ancestors of four Jewish families in Rome were brought by the Roman emperor Titus as Jewish prisoners after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. In Hebrew sources, these families appear as: min ha-tappuḥim (of the apples), min ha-adumim (of the red[-haired]), min ha-anavim (of the humble), and min ha-n’arim (of the youths). . . .

In Hebrew sources, the earliest [contemporary] references to these families correspond to the following centuries: 11th for Anau [from anav], 13th for both de Pomis and de Rossi (meaning “of the apples” and “of the red,” respectively), and 14th for the name meaning “of the youths.” But the bulk of Italian Jews received hereditary surnames only during the 16th century.

The largest category of surnames is based on the names of places—usually the names of nearby towns from which these families came to Rome. . . . Jewish migrants also came to Italy from the territories of modern France. They primarily arrived in two independent waves. The first wave came with the expulsion of the Jews from France in 1394. . . . The second large group came from Marseille and other towns of Provence, a region annexed by the kingdom of France at the end of the 15th century. The general expulsion of Jews from Provence occurred in 1501. The surname Provenzale (“one from Provence” in Italian) comes from these events, as do Passapaire and Sestieri.

Ashkenazi Jews represent the third major source of Italian Jewry. They came during the 13th through 17th centuries from German-speaking provinces (mainly the southern territories that today correspond to Bavaria and Austria) as they escaped pogroms and anti-Jewish legislation. Ashkenazi migrants were particularly common in the northeastern and northern parts of the peninsula: the republic of Venice (especially in the cities of Venice, Padua, and Verona), the duchies of Milan and Mantua (today both in Lombardy), and the area of Trieste. They also settled in Piedmont, as well as central and even southern Italy.

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.