The president of Ghana has proclaimed 2019—the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first black slaves in the British colonies of North American—the “year of return,” inviting people of West African descent to come to the country. For this occasion, Mercedes Bent organized a ten-day visit to Ghana and Nigeria for African-American friends and classmates—an idea she first got from a very different source:

[M]y idea for a heritage-focused trip had been in the making for over a decade. . . . [I]n college, a Jewish friend told me her experiences during an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel. I was impressed when I learned about Taglit-Birthright Israel and its mission to ensure that Jewish young adults have the opportunity to visit and learn about Israel. Last year, as a graduate student, I traveled there with several Jewish classmates. I was moved by—and somewhat envious of—their strong sense of shared identity and how the trip nurtured it. I couldn’t forget that feeling.

There are many ways to nurture a healthy cultural identity, but a journey “home”—to a place that makes you feel that you truly belong—is an especially effective one.

In 1956, Ghana became the first Sub-Saharan African nation to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. It broke off direct ties in 1973, but they resumed in 2011.

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.