In an effort to exploit the recent deaths of two African-American men at the hands of police officers, the New York University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has issued a statement that “many U.S. police departments train with [the] Israel Defense Forces” and that the “same forces behind the genocide of black people in America are behind the genocide of Palestinians.” Alan Dershowitz comments:

By implicating Israel in these killings, SJP is engaging in the old trope of blaming Jews for systemic and far-reaching societal problems. This practice was anti-Semitic when some Christian communities used it to blame Jews for plagues, poisonings, and murders; it was anti-Semitic when the Nazis used it to blame Jews for the failing German economy; and it is still anti-Semitic today. . . . The essence of anti-Semitism is the bigoted claim that if there is a problem, then Jews—and now Zionists—must be its cause. . . .

[Furthermore], the reaction by SJP is reflective of a broader trend in hard-left politics. Increasingly, groups such as Black Lives Matter, MoveOn, Code Pink, and Occupy Wall Street have embraced “intersectionality”—a radical academic theory which holds that all forms of social oppression are inexorably linked. This radical concept has led to the linking of disparate left-wing causes, no matter how tenuous their connections. . . .

Moreover, the conflation of police actions in American cities with Israeli military actions in Gaza raises a disturbing question: if the so-called oppression of Palestinians in Gaza and the oppression of blacks in the United States are two sides of the same coin, . . . are the violent tactics employed by Hamas, and perversely supported by many on the hard left, an appropriate model to emulate in the United States?

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.