When the anti-Semitic rantings of Joy Karega-Mason, a professor at Oberlin College, garnered public attention, Oberlin’s president admitted that “they caused pain for many people” before going on to defend academic freedom and to argue that the “essence” of a liberal-arts education is “interrogating assertions with facts and deep, critical thinking from multiple viewpoints.” Meanwhile, an email from an off-campus account was sent to all of Oberlin’s students claiming that the “state of Israel, Zionist Jews are pure evil. They did 9/11.” Jeffrey Salkin responds:

Imagine a similar verbal attack against blacks. Or LGBT people. Or Muslims. Would [Oberlin’s president] be interested in “interrogating assertions with facts and deep, critical thinking from multiple viewpoints”? I don’t think so.

But when it comes to Jew-hatred, we are supposed to be open-minded, and to entertain multiple narratives, no matter how farfetched, bizarre, and anti-intellectual they might be. But, wait a second. What about all of that academic jargon, that universities should be “safe places”? Or, that we should avoid inflicting “micro-aggressions”?

“Safe places” for everyone—every ethnic group, every identity group, and every ideology. Except for self-affirming Jews and supporters of Israel. No safe places for them.

And micro-aggressions? Let us be overly cautious and oh-so-sensitive against every aggression or perceived aggression—even criticism—no matter how micro. But, micro-aggressions and even macro-aggressions against Jewish students—especially those who defend Israel? They don’t count. They’re not part of the sensitivity club.

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.