In almost every recent controversy involving accusations of anti-Semitism, the U.S.-based organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has stepped forward to defend the alleged anti-Semite. Moreover, explains Joshua Muravchik, JVP’s position is that anti-Semitism is “less important than other prejudices.” The group, which characterizes itself as “the Jewish wing of the Palestinian solidarity movement,” also claims in its literature that Jews tend to be racists and have far too much power. In a thorough study, Muravchik makes clear what JVP is really about:

Sometimes on its own, sometimes in coalitions, JVP undertakes projects aiming to weaken Israel materially or in reputation. [To do so], it deploys its Jewish identity to reassure non-Jewish groups that they can target Israel without compunction or fear of alienating the Jewish community. It has devoted special attention to encouraging U.S. churches to embrace the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel (BDS). . . .

Like the rest of the “Palestinian solidarity movement,” JVP does not shrink from supporting terrorism. Nominally it says it is against violence aimed at civilians, although it does not say by whom. And when I asked the JVP spokeswoman Sonya Meyerson-Knox, in the course of a correspondence in which she had answered some other questions, if JVP had “ever criticized any specific acts or statements by Palestinians against Israel or Jews,” she fell silent and broke off the exchange. In truth, repeated JVP statements defend Palestinian violence of all kinds. . . .

Contrary to allusions in the press, [JVP] is neither liberal nor dovish. Rather, it is a collection of mostly Jewish ideologues of the radical left who realize that their lineage affords special leverage in attacking Israel, which is a defining target of contemporary leftism. Nowhere does JVP evince any genuine interest in Judaism or in the well-being of the Jewish people or any reverence for the accoutrements of Jewish life—holidays, prayers, ceremonial garments, Hebrew words—that it appropriates as props or adornments in its impassioned campaign for Palestinian vanquishment of Israel.

If the use of “Jewish” in its name is opportunistic, the use of the word “peace” is entirely disingenuous. JVP derides what it refers to as “so-called ‘peace talks.’” It declines to spell out an alternative path or the end it seeks, declaring itself indifferent to the details so long as the Palestinians’ “right of return” is achieved. There might be one state or two, it says, but in this formula all will be Arab-dominated. The Jewish state will disappear, and this will constitute the end of racism, the birth of democracy, and the fulfillment of Judaism.

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.