Last week, in the wake of a terrorist attack on a Danish synagogue, Prime Minister Netanyahu reminded European Jews that they have a home in Israel. His statement provoked outrage from European politicians and journalists—much more outrage, notes Seth Frantzman, than the murder of a Jew at a synagogue:

Soon the real narrative of the Copenhagen attack on the Great Synagogue became about Netanyahu. . . . One of the most interesting comments on social media was the claim that “as offended as I am by anti-Semitism, I am equally outraged by Netanyahu’s calls to immigrate.” Numerous iterations of that appeared online.

So why did the European and other press give the Netanyahu call such attention? Why did it become the main story within a day after the attack on the synagogue? Why did those like Piers Morgan write with such outrage against Netanyahu, but not devote a column to the anti-Semitic terror attack? . . .

The fact is that Europe is afraid to face its festering anti-Semitism. No one wants to discuss how a future for Jews in Europe will look. No one wants to ask why Jews need armed guards at kosher markets, why they need armed guards at schools and at their synagogues. No one wants to ask why even though Jews are less than 0.5 percent of [the population of] Europe they are 40 percent of [the] victims of terror on the continent in recent years. Why are hundreds of Jewish graves desecrated? Why is the natural inclination of terrorists to shoot up free-speech events and then a synagogue?

Tough questions. But it’s easier to have Netanyahu.

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.