Last week, controversy broke out in Israel over the education ministry’s attempt to stop high-school principals from inviting representatives of Breaking the Silence—an organization that disseminates flimsy allegations of IDF “war crimes”—to speak to their students. Yoaz Hendel explains why the high-school principals are in the wrong:

The main argument made by principals who wish to let the organization’s representatives speak to their students is the freedom to listen to different opinions. That’s an important argument, but it [does not apply to primary and secondary] education. . . . Why? Because, before learning about complicated things, one must learn about simple things. Before making bridges and rafters, foundations must be laid. When I send my kids to school, I want a Zionist education that encourages them to join the army, contribute, be good citizens, and mainly to feel that they are right. . . .

[Most of Breaking the Silence’s activities are licit] in a democratic state with full freedom of speech, but why [allow them in] the educational system? Are high-school students deeply familiar with the Zionist story? Do they understand what the pioneers sought to create here? Do they know the meaning of an exemplary society, of the orchards planted by the pioneers, which created thousands of jobs for the Arabs in the area? Do they know about the Zionist effort at co-existence and about the bloody response on the Arab side?

There is no reason to fear claims against Israel and its policies. Everyone here will [eventually encounter such claims]. But in the meantime, let teenagers grow up in peace; let them be right. This is a right which is as important as the freedom of political organizations like Breaking the Silence to criticize us.

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.