On the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day earlier this week, Walter Reich offers some reflections on the dangers posed by anti-Semitism today, and especially in the West:

In Western Europe, anti-Semitism is found among right-wing forces; within political parties on the left, especially in Britain; and among elements of the Muslim community.

But for now, the democracies of Western Europe are strong enough to withstand the pressure. And in America, the episodes of anti-Semitic speech and violence, though they’ve greatly proliferated in the past few years, have begun to mobilize communities and governmental agencies to protect Jews. This won’t stop anti-Semitism’s continuing growth, but it will control it. Despite a long history of bias at many levels, from academia to boardrooms, Jews in America have established themselves during the past century in every sphere of American life, and the American tradition of tolerance will remain far more powerful than its manifestations of prejudice.

So although Jews face ongoing violence, it is not of a level that will, in the foreseeable future, result in massive death. In Europe and the United States, there might be limited outbursts. Should Iran develop nuclear weapons, it could, in a moment of irrationality, launch them to try to obliterate the Jewish state, which its leaders repeatedly have vowed to destroy and which is home to nearly half of the world’s Jews; but Iran’s fear that it could be devastated in return by a nuclear-armed Israel would almost surely keep such a cataclysmic possibility in check. In short, despite the rise in worldwide anti-Semitism, a repeat of the Holocaust—major mass murder—is, though possible, unlikely in the foreseeable future.

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.