Tuesday’s congressional elections brought some good news for Jews and supporters of Israel, as Leslie Cockburn (coauthor of a mendacious and vituperative anti-Israel book in 1991), John Fitzgerald (an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier), and Arthur Jones (an outright neo-Nazi) all lost their elections. Yet there were also some disturbing victories, notably those of the BDS-supporter Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and the anti-Semitic Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Add to these Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a socialist who has taken kneejerk anti-Israel positions. Nonetheless, argues Jonathan Tobin, “the election results gave far more comfort to those who wish to keep the Democrats part of a bipartisan pro-Israel coalition than to those who want to break it up.”

We can expect [Tlaib, Omar, and Ocasio-Cortez] to unite with other Democrats who wish to undermine the U.S.-Israel alliance, such as the dozens who last year signed letters—championed by figures such as Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—calling for the lifting of the blockade on the terrorist Hamas regime that rules Gaza. [Furthermore], intersectional ideology, which falsely analogizes the Palestinian war [against Israel] with [African-Americans’] struggle for civil rights in the United States, has become fashionable in progressive circles. But those running the Democratic caucus are still firmly in the pro-Israel camp.

The House Democratic leader—and the presumptive speaker—Nancy Pelosi has been a fairly reliable friend of Israel, though not necessarily a fan of the Netanyahu government. The number-two Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer, is an even more ardent supporter of Israel who has done his best over the years to keep left-wing members of his caucus in line with respect to the Middle East. . . .

Democrats expanded their numbers throughout the country, but those who ran as unabashed progressives, rather than as moderates, generally failed in districts and states that were not deep blue. . . . The future of the Democratic party with respect to Israel is by no means assured as the party shifts to the left. But for the present, the radical anti-Israel faction remains in the minority, at least as far as Congress is concerned. It will be up to pro-Israel liberals to make sure it stays that way.

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.