According to a survey by a Jerusalem-based think tank, there is widespread feeling among Diaspora Jews that Israel doesn’t consider them when making decisions about security matters. Specifically, many believe that Israeli military operations lead to more anti-Semitism, and they want the Jewish state to be mindful of that. Contrary to the think tank’s official report, Judith Bergman finds the suggestion absurd:

Israel is not merely “fighting wars” but struggling for its existence. . . . The very idea, therefore, of involving people who have chosen to make their home outside Israel in the decision-making process concerning issues that are already extremely sensitive, complex, and fraught with pitfalls seems bizarre. . . .

Anti-Semitism is on the rise in all parts of the world. . . . Diaspora Jews obviously have to endure the brunt of this. [However, the] logic applied by the participants surveyed for the purpose of the study . . . is flawed. Israel’s actions are not to blame for the rise of anti-Semitism in the world. . . . Nothing Israel ever does will satisfy its critics, as the last couple of years have amply demonstrated. No amount of moral warfare of the highest caliber . . . will ever be good enough for the international organizations and NGOs that have made it their very raison d’être to criticize Israel. . . .

Having a say in how and when Israel fights its defensive wars is a right reserved for any Jew who wants to assume the responsibilities that having such a say entails: living in Israel and sharing in all of its aspects, the ups as well as the downs, the joys as well as the sorrows. Nowhere in the world do rights come without responsibilities. This holds true for Israel as well.

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.