To mark the 68th anniversary of the creation of the Jewish state, an enterprising individual had a custom-made pair of Reebok’s sneakers produced with the logo “Israel 68” and a blue-and-white color scheme, planning to auction it off as a collector’s item. The company’s Israel division then decided to promote and sell the design on its Facebook page as a special Independence Day offer. When, unsurprisingly, bigots denounced Reebok, the company hastily retreated. Jonathan Marks notes what is most disturbing about its reaction:

[Corporate spokespeople] said, truly enough, that Reebok International had nothing to do with the shoe. But a representative added . . . that Reebok “does not allow its sportswear to be politicized and refrains from distributing shoes tied to national emblems or countries.”

But . . . the latter claim is simply and demonstrably false. Reebok collaborated with a German sneaker boutique to distribute a shoe, “featuring some German military inspiration,” with a German flag patch on its tongue. And Reebok hardly refrains from using other national emblems that some people find offensive.

But second, and more importantly, Reebok accepted the premise that shoes celebrating the independence of Israel were, by virtue of that fact “politicized.” We are used to supporters of BDS forgetting to pretend that they are merely against Israel’s presence in the West Bank and making it clear that they are simply against Israel. We are not used to international companies agreeing that the mere act of celebrating Israel’s independence is “politicized.”

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.