Speaking in support of the UK’s continued presence in the European Union, on which a referendum is being held today, Prime Minister David Cameron recently argued that without Britain the EU will move in an even more anti-Israel direction, and Jews should therefore vote against “Brexit.” Jonathan Neumann responds:

Is Israel better off with Britain remaining inside the EU? The question might better be asked as follows: would it be better for Jews as a whole? Chief among the issues the EU will surely take up of keen interest to the continuance of Jewry in Europe are the possibility of future restrictions by the EU on kosher ritual slaughter and circumcision as well as the flows of migrants into Europe, some of whom have already targeted Jewish businesses.

The prime minister is probably right that Britain may be able to play a role tempering the EU’s negative diplomatic stance toward Israel from within, and might be a voice against rules that will make it difficult, if not impossible, for Jews to live in Europe. Indeed, if the EU’s current policies toward the Jewish state are the outcome of Britain’s positive influence, one dreads to think what the EU might do were Britain to leave. But the primary concern of Britain’s Jews will not be this issue but rather the general set of concerns Jews share with their fellow Britons over the economy, immigration, and sovereignty.

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.