Born in Babylonia in the late 2nd century CE, Abba ben Ayvo was one of the earliest amoraim—as the sages whose teachings make up the Gemara, or latter stratum of the Talmud, are known. His contemporaries knew him as Abba Arikha (Abba the Tall), but his influence was so great that the Talmud’s editors most often refer to him simply as Rav (rabbi). As a young man, he studied in the land of Israel before returning to his native country, which in his lifetime began to rival—and would later eclipse—Roman Palestine as the center of rabbinic intellectual activity. Henry Abramson presents a brief synopsis of his remarkable career. (Video, 4 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.