After the defeat of Nazism in World War II, the Soviet Union and its satellites became the main European incubators of anti-Semitism, a doctrine they soon repackaged, with great success, as anti-Zionism. Asael Abelman tells this story in a sweeping and penetrating essay that can be read in its original Hebrew here or in a rough English translation at the link below:

After 1945, and even more so after 1948, the war against the Jews ceased to be one against a people scattered and dispersed among the nations but instead against a people who had returned to their land. The banner of this war against the Jews was now borne by the Arab peoples as well as Muslims throughout the world, and even though a wide chasm separated most of them from the European left, all parties found in this struggle a common denominator. . . .

Take Poland, for example, in the late 1960s. During this period, Polish students were expressing their resentment of the Communist regime in their country. When the regime sought a way to rally its ranks and divert attention from its critics, it found it in anti-Semitism. By then, most of the Jews of Poland had been exterminated [in World War II]; many others had left for Israel and other countries; and many of the remaining Jews in Poland did not see themselves as Jews, were themselves unaware that they were Jews, or were completely indifferent to their Jewish identity. But none of this prevented the leader of Poland, Wladyslaw Gomulka, from looking for a way to use anti-Semitism to serve his political needs.

His opportunity arrived with Israel’s victory over the Arab states in the Six-Day War. Immediately thereafter, Gomulka publicly announced that “Polish citizens of the Jewish nation are not prevented from returning to Israel if they wish. Our position is that every Polish citizen should have one state: the Polish People’s Republic; . . . we do not want a fifth column.” Thus, parallel to the Arab desire to destroy the state of Israel, anti-Semitism came out of the mouth of the leader of the Polish Communist regime, a man who no doubt considered racist Nazism to be the absolute evil, [who was himself married to a Jewish woman], and who subscribed to an ideological doctrine strongly opposed to national hatred.

Thereafter, Gomulka’s Poland became flooded with anti-Semitism. Persistent rumors claimed that the economic shortage in Poland was caused by unfaithful Jewish Communists; Jewish lecturers and students were expelled from the academy; and anti-Jewish notions straight out of Nazi Germany appeared in the official press. . . .

This recruitment of the hatred of Israel for political purposes in Poland . . . was conducted in parallel with Soviet oppression of Poland itself, and the Soviet authorities likewise used anti-Semitism for their own ends. . . . One incident illustrates perfectly the cooperation engendered by the war against the Jews: the doctoral dissertation written by Mahmoud Abbas at a Soviet university on the supposed cooperation between Zionists and Nazis. This work by a current Palestinian leader is particularly striking in light of the fact that one of the first Palestinian leaders, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, had promoted the extermination of European Jews in cooperation with the Nazis.

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.