In 2012, Raif Badawi, a dissident Saudi blogger, was arrested on charges of apostasy and insulting Islam. Two years later, a Saudi court sentenced him to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes, of which he has so far received only the first set of 50. His wife, Ensaf Haidar, has since taken refuge in Canada, and devoted herself to obtaining his freedom and to human-rights causes more generally. She writes of the anti-Semitism endemic to the Arab world:

Central to [my husband’s] case is his vision of a different future for his country and region; a future based on our shared humanity; one based on acceptance, respect, and mutual understanding; one that aspires to peace in the region.

Central to this vision is an end to the discourse of hatred that we have learned in our childhood, mainstreamed by extremist religious teachings and governments’ cynical exploitation of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Central to this vision is an acceptance that we are all equal in dignity and rights regardless of our religion, thoughts, sex, color, or social status.

Central to this vision is the recognition that Jews are not our enemies. . . .

We were taught in the Arab world that the Holocaust was just a big lie. . . . Since childhood, we grew up on hatred of Jews and were taught to curse them. We must insist on repudiating these messages and work actively to eliminate them.

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.