Despite repeated efforts, Reform and Conservative Judaism, which play such a prominent role in Jewish life in America and elsewhere in the Diaspora, have made few inroads in Israel. Leaders of these denominations have placed the blame for this on the official status accorded Orthodoxy in Israeli law and government funding of Orthodox institutions. But the real problem, writes Liam Hoare, lies with the failure of the two branches of Judaism themselves:

[I]t is not enough to state the obvious fact that the Orthodox monopoly is, generally speaking, a bad thing. Up until now, Reform and Conservative leaders in Israel have offered Israelis a model of religiosity and religious life that appears to be irrelevant to living in a Jewish state. There is no room [in Israel] for the synagogue as community center, . . . no need for Hebrew interpretation and education among a Hebrew-speaking people, and no place for temperate religious practice in a place where vibrant secularism and pluralism are thriving.

It cannot be denied that Reform and Conservative Judaism . . . continue to serve an essential function, providing a sense of community and meaning to millions of Jews in the Diaspora. But their Israeli branches have tended to offer answers that are relevant to the problems and questions of those Diaspora Jews. . . . To succeed in their goal of forging a place for themselves in Israeli society, Reform and Conservative leaders must grapple with this problem, and find a way to be not only Reform or Conservative, but also Israeli.

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.