Last summer, a group of British Jews affiliated with left-wing Zionist youth groups wrote an open letter to the Jewish Chronicle—the UK’s most prominent Jewish publication—proclaiming their support for “ending the occupation.” In its editorial response, the Chronicle took the letter as a sign of a general leftward shift among British Jewry on questions relating to the Jewish state. Simon Gordon is not convinced:

The available data does not indicate a leftward shift. [The left-wing British Zionist organization] Yachad’s own survey of the attitudes of British Jews toward Israel . . . found that 60 percent agreed that there is no Palestinian partner for peace, 70 percent said Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state if they want peace, and 93 percent thought Israel was entitled to take military action to combat Hamas rockets and tunnels. Such views are hardly out of step with those of the Israeli government. This may explain why the Jewish Chronicle’s poll of British Jews prior to the 2015 Israeli elections . . . found that 67 percent would vote Likud, with just 22 percent backing the Zionist Union. . . .

If communal leaders are out of step with the Jewish community on Israel, the misalignment is not the one suggested in the open letter. Far from marginalizing the New Israel Fund, [a group dedicated to making Israel reflect “progressive values”], and progressive youth groups, as the open letter alleges, the institutions of Anglo-Jewry have been all too receptive. The limp defense of Israel by the Board of Deputies [the most important lay representative of organized British Jewry] during the 2014 Gaza War prompted a furious backlash from Jews at a townhall event, who felt [the Board] should have adopted a much more muscular stance. . . .

Misalignment between Jewish institutions and the Jewish community occurs when the leadership mistakes the views of a vocal minority for those of the silent majority. The available evidence suggests that mainstream Anglo-Jewry supports Israel, its government, and the actions of its military, much as it has done for decades.

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.