Near the end of the 1930s, when much of the world had closed its doors to Jewish refugees, the Philippine president Manuel Quezon decided to welcome Jews from Austria and Germany to his country. But the U.S. government, which in 1935 had granted autonomy but not complete independence to the Commonwealth of the Philippines, interfered with his efforts. Rich Tenorio writes:

Quezon wanted to bring tens of thousands of Jews to the Philippines and permanently settle them on the island of Mindanao. [But he] faced internal opposition to his refugee plan within the Philippines. . . . Quezon’s health also hindered his ability [to carry out his plan]; he was battling a relapse of the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him. . . .

“Unfortunately, the Americans rejected the idea,” said [Israel Imperial, the current Philippine ambassador to Israel], adding that a compromise figure of 10,000 was reached—1,000 visas over ten years—but the Japanese invasion of the Philippines brought the program to “an abrupt end.” Imperial said that the number of Jews saved by Quezon is between 1,200 and 1,300.

A new feature film, Quezon’s Game, directed by the Philippines-based Jewish filmmaker Matthew Rosen, may help cement the initiative’s place in history. [There is also a] 2020 documentary, The Last Manilaners, directed by Nico Hernandez, [as well as] a 2012 documentary by the Filipino filmmaker Noel Izon, An Open Door: Jewish Rescue in the Philippines.

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.