Benjamin Netanyahu has brought Israel’s two major ultra-Orthodox (ḥaredi) parties, United Torah Judaism (UTJ) and Shas, into his new governing coalition. Many American Jews would no doubt prefer that Israel display a greater separation of synagogue and state and more religious pluralism; however, writes Jonathan Tobin, they should assess the situation with some realism:

[B]efore [religiously liberal American Jews] start blaming Netanyahu for betraying them, they need to reacquaint themselves with the political realities of Israel and understand that Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog would have cut the same deals with the Ḥaredim.

In addition to being a windfall for the sub-standard ultra-Orthodox education system, the return of Shas and UTJ to power will impact the effort to enact more liberal rules about conversion [and impede] the minimal progress made toward civil marriage and/or the recognition of non-Orthodox movements and rabbis. It may also undermine the plans to create an egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall.

These are sore points for American Jews who see the exclusion of Reform and Conservative Judaism from official recognition by the Jewish state as a standing insult. . . . But those crying foul over Netanyahu’s deal with the Ḥaredim need to get their heads out of the clouds and understand that their concerns don’t mean much to most Israelis.

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.