With Israeli elections on the horizon, David M. Weinberg notes that a number of politicians—from the right-wing secularist Avigdor Liberman to the left-wing Stav Shafrir to the centrist Yair Lapid—have been trying to gain votes by scapegoating Ḥaredim and stoking fears of disappearing religious freedom. Weinberg finds the tenor of these appeals both hysterical and intolerant:

The religion-baiting campaigns of these politicians goes . . . beyond expected (and sometimes justifiable) criticism of the ḥaredi-ized rabbinic bureaucracy. . . . If such [rhetoric] were to be used [in the Diaspora], every Jewish defense agency would be screaming bloody murder. I hear things like this [from speeches and campaign advertisements]: rabbis are out to indoctrinate your children and subjugate your women; religious Jews will imprison you (in your home on Shabbat), spoil your food (via kashrut impositions), and restrict your sexual freedoms (especially LGBTQ rights).

It’s time to reassert some rationality and moderation in national debates over matters of religion and state, or faith and democracy. . . . I am convinced that the vast majority of Israelis are profoundly uncomfortable with the current anti-religious rabble-rousing. Disagreements about matters of faith and policy can be adjudicated reasonably out of respect for both tradition and [personal freedom]. And we are, ultimately and unquestionably, a nation of believers and democrats.

Not so long ago, the steadfast leaders of the socialist-secularist Zionist left like David Ben-Gurion had no problem articulating their love for Jewish erudition and acting on their desire that all Israeli youth be knowledgeable of Jewish texts. Ben-Gurion would have angrily rejected the simplistic and false dichotomy that [some politicians] promote about Judaism and liberalism. “There is no wall of separation in Israel between Judaism and humanism,” wrote Ben-Gurion in 1954. “Our physical and spiritual lives are entirely integrated in one overarching and embracing framework: Jewish sovereignty.”

We need politicians like Ben-Gurion . . . today; men of reflection whose non-religious ideological moorings were secure and deep enough to embrace [both] Jewish and Zionist roots.

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.