Noting that the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel features a strong undercurrent of anti-Americanism, Benjamin Weinthal and Asaf Romirowsky encourage Washington to take action:

First, the U.S. Congress should submit the Combating BDS Act of 2016 for President Trump’s signature. The bipartisan legislation would permit state and local governments to penalize companies participating in BDS. . . .

Second, Trump can join other world leaders, especially those from BDS ground-zero countries in Western Europe, and declare BDS an anti-Semitic movement that runs counter to all peace efforts. Moreover, lawmakers should push through Congress the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act. . . . This legislation would give the U.S. Department of Education the statutory tools to examine anti-Semitic incidents [in schools and universities] in the broadest and most effective way possible. . . . The act will enhance the Department of Education’s ability to identify, investigate, and punish all forms of anti-Semitism, including anti-Zionism and anti-Israel harassment.

Third, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, can help to move the United States out of the company of the jackals and state that [the recent Security Council resolution regarding Israeli settlements] boosts BDS and should be discarded and disdained. . . . Finally, U.S. ambassadors in countries where BDS is flourishing—countries such as Ireland, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Belgium—should deliver speeches in those countries condemning the movement. Moreover, the ambassadors should advocate that the European Union replicate anti-BDS legislation. . . .

The BDS movement has been incorrectly viewed as exclusively anti-Israel. Take one telling example: Code Pink, an allegedly pro-peace U.S. group that is a main actor in the [American] BDS network. Code Pink supports many of America’s principal enemies—the Islamic Republic of Iran and Communist North Korea, just to name a couple.

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.