At the beginning of the 20th century, Aramaic—once the Near East’s lingua franca and the native tongue of most of the world’s Jews—was widely spoken in Jewish communities in Iraq, Iran, and other areas. Since then various waves of persecution, of which the depredations of Islamic State are only the most recent, have greatly reduced the number of speakers of the language. Jacqueline Taylor describes one of several Jewish dialects of what linguists term Neo-Aramaic:

The community of Jewish Neo-Aramaic speakers from Urmia in the Western Azerbaijan region of Iran called themselves Nash Didan, which translates to “our people.” This community of roughly 400 families named their language Lishán Didán, which translates to “our language.”

Lishán Didán and other Jewish dialects are drastically different linguistically from the language of the Christian communities occupying the same land. . . . There has been a robust movement to preserve Christian dialects of Aramaic, but there is no similar mission to preserve the Jewish dialects. . . .

The current leadership of Iran has destroyed the ancient Nash Didan cemetery, leaving in its place an unfinished hospital and empty lot. The land of Urmia was inhabited for centuries by the same small Jewish community since the Babylonian captivity. [Already] outdated assessments show fewer than 5,000 speakers of Lishán Didán, and those speakers are very advanced in age.

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.