According to a recent report, North American Islamic-studies textbooks and curricula, produced by Muslim organizations for school children, tend to advocate tolerance—except when it comes to the Jewish state. Danielle Ziri writes:

In two of the curricula, Israel appears on some maps, while others omit the name entirely. One textbook even states that Israel has no historic claim to [its] land, while another places anti-Israel activities at the center of its call for political activism. . . . [The textbooks present a] narrative about Israel and the Palestinians [that] is simplistic, one-sided, and unhelpful. . . .

While the five Islamic curricula are all based on sharia law, aside from their views on Israel, most . . . carry a generally tolerant perspective and even encourage involvement in American civic and economic life—[except for one, which] teaches that Islam should be imposed by the full force of the Muslim state.

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.