Having attended the recent AIPAC convention, Alex Joffe reports on the speeches by the various presidential candidates, and especially on the one speech that garnered so much attention before and after:

You, the average well-educated, well-intentioned listener, sit there with your stubborn preconceptions, smug in your ability to filter fact from fancy, hyperbole from reality. But with a rising and falling cadence, the repetition of “believe me,” the mugging, the finger-waving, and—it must said—the recitation of actual facts about Iran, Palestinian incitement, and terrorism, the crowd—including you—is sucked in.

“Believe me,” [Donald Trump] said, over and over. Of course we don’t believe you. You don’t even believe you, do you? Or maybe, just maybe, he does believe himself. By sheer repetition, by understanding that crowds really do want to believe in something today, to hang on to something that is not a shadow, that has substance, resistance is worn down.

It didn’t really matter what he said, but the way he said it. He stayed close to his script and avoided disaster and sounded sort of sensible on the Iran deal (it’s a bad deal), Palestinian terrorism and incitement, and more. Trump’s particular gift is to take a sensible observation and make it sound outrageous (illegal immigration, terrorism, whatever) and to fix it in your mind through excess. . . .

It was simultaneously masterful and preposterous. . . .

The specter of a Trump blowup hung over the entire affair. . . . Everyone expected worse. Of course, the Affair of Trump at AIPAC will be turned into the Worst Insult Ever by a Racist Who Shouldn’t Have Been Invited That Tarnishes AIPAC and the Entire Jewish Community. But the damage done? Only in the eyes of those who obsess over every word uttered by, for, in front of, in the context of, and in the general vicinity or penumbra of Jews. . . .

As for the protests, the promised walkouts, these were shadows, camera-phone theatrics invisible to spectators, much less official feeds. So much for strident statements from movements and magazines alike, puffed-up talk from righteous moralizers taking a Bold Stand against Racism. Of course, the focus will not be on them but on AIPAC—oh my God, did you hear the applause? AIPAC fell for Trump. AIPAC supports Trump. American Jews are racists and fascists because they laughed at his jokes. Of course, it’s never about the moralizers; it’s just about the Jews. All of them. Which is to say, it’s really about the feelings of moralizers, the League of Indignant Jews and their self-image as The Kind and Caring Jews.

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.