In addition to the dozens of athletic teams in Israel bear the name “Makkabi,” there is also a semi-professional soccer team with that name whose members play wearing Star-of-David jerseys. Amit Naor tells their story:

In late August of 1898, Max Nordau stood at the podium of the Zionist Congress and called for the promotion of “muscular Judaism” (Muskeljudentum), an idea that envisioned the creation of a “new Jew,” typified by physical strength, which was, in his opinion, necessary in order to achieve the national revival of the Jewish people. [A]t the end of October of that year, 48 young Zionists gathered in Berlin and founded an athletics club in the city, a true realization of Nordau’s ideas. They named the club “Bar Kokhba,” after the legendary Jewish hero who led a revolt against Roman rule.

During those years, Jewish clubs of the sort began to spring up like mushrooms after the rain. Most of them chose powerful Hebrew names like ha-Koaḥ (“The Force” or “The Strength”) and ha-Gibor (“The Hero”), or names of heroic figures from scripture such as Gideon and, of course, Makkabi.

Most of the Bar Kokhba Association’s successes were in gymnastics, while the soccer team generally took a backseat to the various other departments. The impressive achievements in gymnastics and boxing reinforced a Jewish sense of pride by showing that Jews were not inferior to their German neighbors. Jewish sports fans especially enjoyed watching the athletes proudly wear the light-blue Star of David on their uniforms. . . . Young members of the association [later] formed the core of a Jewish defense force that helped protect the Jewish quarter in Berlin where Jews were harassed during and after World War I.

These clubs were eventually shut down by the Nazis, but after World War II they were reconstituted by former members in Berlin, and later joined together to form Makkabi, a sports club with 500 members, including the soccer team.

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.