After his legions crushed the Jewish Revolt in 70 CE, Titus—son and heir of then-Emperor Vespasian—took as his consort Berenice, whose brother, Agrippa II, had been the last king of Judea. (Since the Judean royal family had opposed the rebellion, Titus’ choice might have been a gesture of reconciliation with local loyalists.) Frederic Brandfon notes that many Romans reacted with fear that Berenice would persuade Titus to become a Jew, or that their children would be raised as Jews, and they might find themselves with a Jewish emperor:

Indeed, preceding dynasties had also faced the charge of Judaizing the empire. Emperor Claudius, who preceded Titus by fewer than twenty years, had a visiting dignitary, Isidorus of Alexandria, executed for accusing him of being Jewish. A few years later, Nero, who ruled Rome until 68 CE . . . could not escape association with Jews. His wife was a “God-Fearer,” that is. a person who engaged in some Jewish practices without converting. There was precedent, therefore, for both Titus’s romantic entanglement and the accusations that came with it

Titus understood that Berenice’s potential ascendance to imperial power was a threat, real or imagined, to the future of the nascent Flavian dynasty [founded by his father], which, like all dynasties, needed stability and not controversy. Berenice was forced into exile. . . . The notion that a single Jew could transform Western society into a Jewish empire was a fear that did not die.

Even the actual transformation of the Roman empire through the establishment of Christianity as the state religion—a faith that incorporated the Jewish Bible, and replaced traditional Roman Gods with a crucified Jew—did not bring an end to the charge of Judaizing: later emperors were accused of being Jewish when they took the side of Jews against Christians. In 387 and 388, synagogues were burned in both Rome and Callinicum in Mesopotamia. The Western emperor Magnus Maximus ordered the Roman synagogue rebuilt, and was promptly labeled a Jew.

As Brandfon goes on to demonstrate, strikingly similar fears persisted in Rome itself into modern times.

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.