In part, Israel’s current political stalemate stems from the Likud party’s inability to garner the combined support of, on the one hand, the right-wing and secularist Yisrael Beytenu party and, on the other hand, the ḥaredi parties. The past week has seen an exchange of barbs between the two groups. But left-wing parties, for their part, have rarely succeeded in forging alliances with Ḥaredim, argues Yeshoshua Pfeffer, and not only because the right is more likely to provide the necessary inducement. Instead, Pfeffer writes, Ḥaredim have a natural affinity with the right, stemming from a shared embrace of particularism in contrast to the universalism that has become ever more predominant on the left:

Recurring surveys indicate that members of Israel’s ḥaredi community hold political views that are firmly on the right—and [they are] often the most right-wing of all Israeli sectors. The longstanding alliance between the right and ḥaredi society cannot be dissociated from political positions, notwithstanding the recent statement by Moshe Gafni [the leader of the non-ḥasidic ḥaredi party] in which he asserted “I am on the right, even though on many policies I am not.” [Indeed], his assertion that his “voters’ views are closer to the left’s positions” is entirely divorced from reality.

At the time of Israel’s creation, it was the left that led the Zionist movement and the founding of the state. A far cry from the universalists of today, they might indeed have marched under the banner of “we must be like the nations of the world,” but they did so while maintaining a proud nationalism.

Over time, the Israeli left—at least its vocal majority—shed its original nationalist [and] Zionist characteristics in favor of a universalism that frowns upon, or disallows outright, all forms of particularistic group identities. A significant portion [of the left] has moved toward a post-Zionism of one sort or another. Their place in Israel’s nationalist aspirations has been filled by the Israeli right, who proudly bear their Jewish identity and with whom ḥaredi society is far more comfortable.

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.