In March, the Berlin Jewish Museum hosted an Iranian diplomat who received a private tour, met with the museum’s director, and made a pronouncement about the importance of distinguishing anti-Semitism from anti-Zionism. This is not the first time in the past few years that the museum has ignited controversy by inviting committed enemies of the Jewish state. More recently, the museum’s official Twitter account appeared to oppose recent German legislation declaring the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish state a form of anti-Semitism. As a result of fierce criticism from the German Jewish community, the museum’s director—the distinguished scholar of ancient Judaism Peter Schäfer, who is not himself a Jew—has resigned. Manfred Gerstenfeld comments:

The position [of the museum’s director] has many complex political and managerial aspects and Schäfer, primarily a scholar, never should have accepted it. It requires an experienced manager with profound political understanding and instincts who is able to operate in what is for German Jews a highly problematic reality.

There are many topics that merit attention or even exhibitions by a Jewish museum in Berlin, but are [nowadays] taboo. For example: the mutation over the years of murderous anti-Semitism against Jews in Nazi Germany into the massive demonization of Israel in contemporary Germany. This expresses itself in the frequent comparisons of Israel’s actions against the Palestinians with those of the Nazis toward the Jews. Another exhibition could compare the modern-day Arab demonization of Israel and the Jews with that conducted by the Nazis. . . .

There are very different possible subjects of exhibitions as well, such as the role of the church in creating the infrastructure for persecution in Germany and how much of that survives in the current German Christian environment. . . . When the day comes that the Jewish Museum organizes such exhibitions, we will know the messianic age is dawning.

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.