At a widely-read blog about anthropology, posts attributed to one “Isaiah Silver” have been arguing for the American Anthropological Association to boycott Israeli scholars and institutions. “Isaiah Silver” is supposedly a pseudonym for two American Jewish archaeologists, (“proud Jews,” of course), who have spent time in Israel. David M. Rosen writes:

As a former “insider,” Isaiah Silver, the renegade “proud Jew,” lends the aura of authenticity to BDS’s accusations. . . . But why choose a pseudonym? After all, anyone remotely familiar with American anthropology knows that you don’t exactly need to be Braveheart to condemn Israel in front of a crowd of American anthropologists. But the pseudonym adds to the aura of staged victimhood, as these BDS propagandists demand that their identities be protected as they seek to destroy the careers of their Israeli colleagues. . . .

Israeli anthropologists, on the whole, are politically left, liberal, tolerant, and opposed to . . . the current right-wing government of Israel. . . . But instead of treating them as allies, “Isaiah Silver” and his ilk have invented . . . phony transgressions to be rectified by boycott. First and foremost is the charge that Israeli anthropology is responsible for the nationalist bent of some Israeli archaeology. Left unsaid is that in Israel, as in Europe, archaeology is not a subfield of anthropology. . . .

Secondly, BDS supporters charge Israeli anthropologists with “crimes of omission” in their work when they fail to engage the issue of the Palestinians. It is true that not all Israeli anthropologists are political, and many have engaged in research which has little or nothing to do with politics or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But anthropologists throughout the world engage in work that has scant connection to politics. How does the normal work of anthropology come to be characterized by BDS and its supporters . . . as a crime of omission? Even more problematic, how anyone can buy into this nonsense?

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.