In an extensive exploration of the former secretary of state’s political evolution, Joshua Muravchik notes that among those who exert the greatest influence on her are two Jews with a record of hostility toward Israel. One is Michael Lerner, a New Left radical turned new-age rabbi and tireless critic of the Jewish state. The other, Sidney Blumenthal, whom she retained as an unofficial adviser while secretary of state, authored myriad emails to her—now available to the public—that her own correspondence indicates she took very seriously. Blumenthal’s son, Max, penned book of anti-Israel libels so atrocious as to make dedicated left-wing critics of Israel blush. Muravchik writes:

The messages [from Blumenthal to Clinton] consisted mostly of articles he was forwarding, often prefaced with a brief comment. . . . No other country received even a fraction of the attention he devoted to Libya, with one glaring exception: Israel. . . . In contrast [to the Libya emails], his communications about Israel clearly press a point of view about the country and its policies. They are unfailingly critical of Israel, blaming it for the absence of peace.

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2009 first publicly endorsed a two-state solution with Palestinians, Blumenthal wrote to Clinton that this was a “transparently false and hypocritical ploy” on which she should try to “catch” him. . . . When she prepared to speak before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, he urged using the occasion to diminish [it]. . . .

Among the articles Blumenthal transmitted was one by the UK’s Jeremy Greenstock arguing that Hamas sought peace and quoting approvingly a UN official who called Israel’s control of imports into Gaza “illegal, inhuman, . . . insane, . . . a medieval siege.” . . .

The author whose writing Blumenthal transmitted most often was his son, Max. . . . Of course Sidney cannot be held accountable for Max’s writings, but of the articles Sidney forwarded to Clinton on the subject of Israel, he sent more by Max than by any other author.

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.