In 1943, Slovakia’s pro-Nazi puppet regime confiscated the old Jewish cemetery in Bratislava (known before 1918 as Pressburg)—which dated back to the 17th century—planning to pave it over and build a tram line where it once lay. Somehow, the Bratislava Jewish community managed to convince their rulers to allow them to reinter the bodies and even to preserve the grave of the city’s best-known rabbi, Moses Schreiber (1762-1839), perhaps because the authorities feared that there was a curse placed on his grave. The decision led to the construction of a mausoleum that still survives. Henry Abramson describes the cemetery and its history and tells the story of Schreiber, also known as the Ḥatam Sofer, who played a key role in the development of Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Judaism. (Video, 13 minutes.)

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.