The United Church of Christ (UCC) is about to hold its General Synod, where its leaders will consider no fewer than three resolutions condemning Israel and endorsing BDS. Jonathan Marks looks into the sources informing these resolutions:

[A]s the Presbyterian Church (USA) has its Israel-Palestine Mission Network driving its anti-Israel activities, so the UCC has its Palestine/Israel Network, and its page is, or should be, an embarrassment to everyone involved in the UCC. Consider what the Network considers a trustworthy source on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We get, among other things, an article from Countercurrents on “How U.S. Tax Breaks Fund Israeli Settlers.” Countercurrents has also published the authoritative “Why the World Should Not Be Controlled by the Zionist Jews,” which begins: “the geopolitical situation demands that the world must confront Jews, particularly the ones who hold absolute sway over arms sale [sic], media, and the Zionists.” . . .

The site also links not once, not twice, but three times, to Counterpunch, a journal with its own issues with anti-Semitism. Although the divestment resolutions both refer to the UCC’s 2001 resolution confessing to the sin of anti-Semitism and denouncing it, the . . . primary movers [of divestment] appear not to have let that affect their reading habits. . . .

The gang that produced this helpful guide to educating oneself on the [Israel-Palestinian] conflict is the gang that has been engaged in educating the UCC on the issue. I’d like to say that the Church will notice the stench. But as the Presbyterian Church showed, many mainline Protestant leaders do not have strong senses of smell when it comes to anti-Semitism.

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.