Great effort has been expended to counter the increasingly virulent anti-Israel atmosphere on college campuses, but so far to little avail. Part of the problem, argues Caroline Glick, is that hostility to Israel is but a symptom of the much broader crisis of the American university, and it needs to be understood in those terms:

As Jewish leaders see things, there is no inherent connection between the protesters embracing victimhood and demanding constraints on freedom of expression, inquiry, and assembly (and free tuition), and those who seek to drive Jews out of the public sphere on college campuses. . . .

The inherent conflict between the tenets of the “progressive” movement and Jewish rights is exposed in a guide to racial “micro-aggressions” published earlier this year by the University of California. . . . [A]mong other things, the list of offenses includes the embrace of merit as a means of advancing in society. A statement along the lines of “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” can destroy a person’s academic career. So, too, statements rejecting race as a significant factor in judging a person’s competence are now deemed racist. . . .

Jews are the greatest victims of this state of affairs. For the better part of the past hundred years, the upward mobility of American Jewry has been directly correlated with America’s embrace of meritocratic values. The more Americans have looked past race and ethnicity and judged people by their talents, characters, and professional competence, the higher Jews have risen. Conversely, where qualities other than competence, talent, and professionalism have determined social and professional status, Jews have suffered.

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.