In 1944, the Roosevelt administration—after much reluctance to make any special efforts to help Jews threatened with extermination in Nazi-dominated Europe—granted 1,000 Jews permission to enter the U.S. They would be interned in Fort Ontario in the upstate New York town of Oswego. Drawing in part on interviews with the refugee camp’s inmates, Keren Blankfeld writes:

Hundreds of [Jewish] refugees were interviewed across Italy, and 1,000 names were selected out of 3,000 applicants. Key requirements included no men of military age (who could otherwise be fighting among the Allies), no one with contagious diseases, and no separation of families. The official count of refugees who arrived in Oswego was 982, since some never showed up at the port. One baby was born during the journey, and he was dubbed International Harry by those on board.

Roosevelt’s invitation was not open-ended, though. The refugees signed statements agreeing to return to Europe when the war ended. They were in the United States under no official immigration quota, with no legal status. But they’d be safe.

When the war in Europe ended, a national debate raged over how to handle the millions of displaced people. Returning troops had trouble finding work, and anti-Semitism was rampant. The Oswego refugees had promised to return to Europe. Yet a vast majority had nothing to return to.

In late 1945, despite most Americans’ disapproval, President Harry S. Truman issued a directive requiring that existing immigration quotas be designated for war refugees. He specifically directed that Fort Ontario’s “guests” be given visas.

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.