At the start of a 1983 collection of his essays, Irving Kristol—the so-called “godfather of neoconservatism”—cited an epigraph by the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard: “Everything that passes for politics today will be unmasked as religion tomorrow.” Matthew Continetti argues that Kristol’s belief in the theological roots of politics, a belief summed up by this quotation, animated much of his thinking. To Kristol, whose essays on Jews and Judaism are among the less well-known of his many writings, the “rabbinic” impulse, with its emphasis on law and tradition, was politically superior to the utopianism of what he termed “gnosticism.” In this light, Continetti goes on to discuss the relevance of Kristol’s political theology to today’s political debates. (Interview by Devorah Goldman and Daniel Wiser, Jr. Audio, 46 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.