As a graduate student at the University of Michigan in the 1960s, Robert Rockaway was surprised to find how many of his Jewish colleagues and professors were reticent about—or even ashamed of—the fact that they were Jews. His efforts, along with a handful of other students, to start a Jewish-studies program brought these feelings to the fore:

[O]ver three months, we met with Jewish professors in the history, political-science, philosophy, and Near Eastern-studies departments. The result was that only one professor . . . openly supported our efforts. [Likewise], when we first approached the Detroit Jewish Federation for money to fund a Jewish-studies program at Michigan, we got the same answer the professors gave: “It’s not a credible academic field.” . . .

As I reflect on those years, I now appreciate [the reasons behind] all the hesitation to express one’s Jewish identity openly: the concern about anti-Semitism. In the city of Detroit in the 1960s, the Detroit Athletic Club barred Jews from membership. Private golf courses restricted their membership to non-Jews. Certain neighborhoods, such as the affluent suburb of Grosse Pointe, maintained “gentlemen’s agreements” of not selling homes to Jews. And the Detroit Edison company and other firms did not hire Jews. . . .

But the memories of hard-core anti-Semitism, however scary, did not adequately account for the hesitancy to express any Jewish identity on the part of my Jewish peers and faculty members at the university. Abandoning or hiding from your heritage in order to be accepted has never worked. It did not work in Europe and it does not work in America. . . .

Once upon a time, persecution was the glue that held non-religious Jews together, but it no longer appears to play a significant role in Jewish survival in America. However, surveys and journalistic pieces in the general and Jewish press point to a resurgence of overt anti-Jewish sentiment in the United States, perhaps especially on college campuses and among academics. I can only wonder what impact this new turn of the wheel will have on the future of Jewish-American identity and attitudes, and on American Jewish life.

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.