A recent article in the New York Times complained of a “right-wing Jewish settler group” that “has moved hundreds of Jews” into the predominantly Arab eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. But, notes Luke Moon, the article says nothing about the area’s history:

Silwan’s first inhabitants were Yemenite Jews who in 1881 spent six months traveling to Jerusalem. These Jews were inspired to travel the long, arduous journey on the [expectation] that the messiah would come to Jerusalem the following year. . . . Settling on the eastern slopes of the Kidron Valley, [they] built a thriving community and established a synagogue, the same synagogue that the “right-wing Jewish settler group” is rebuilding.

Perhaps an article that mentions the 5,000 Arab inhabitants of Silwan might mention how it became a Palestinian neighborhood when it started as a Yemenite Jewish village. As the inhabitants in Jerusalem felt more confident to move out of the walled city, the original village expanded to include not just Jews but also Muslim and Christian Arabs, too. An early British Mandate-period census shows Silwan to be a mixed village of almost 2,000 people, of whom the Jews made up about 10 percent. But during the 1936–39 Arab Revolt, the village of Silwan was ethnically cleansed of all Jews, and Arab families moved into the homes of Yemenite Jews. One might wonder if the descendants of those Yemenite Jews still have the keys to their homes.

Moreover, the very name Silwan derives from the Siloam Pool, the First Temple-era water source mentioned, as Moon goes on to explain, in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, and significant to Jews and Christians alike.

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.