George Soros—a billionaire who supports numerous left-liberal causes, including several anti-Israel organizations—and Charles Koch—a billionaire who supports numerous conservative and libertarian causes—don’t agree on much. But they have joined forces to create the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. The new think tank bills itself as in favor of peace and diplomacy, and against overseas interventions. As Eliana Johnson notes, it has thus far hired several people with a habit of promoting anti-Israel, and even anti-Semitic, conspiracy theories:

Lawrence Wilkerson, a nonresident fellow at the institute [and formerly Colin Powell’s chief of staff], said in a 2007 documentary that “the Jewish lobby in America” and “AIPAC in particular” played an outsize influence in the run-up to the [2003 Iraq] war—and, in fact, had more of an impact than the administration’s belief that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction or the president’s belief in spreading democracy. . . . [Wilkerson] came under fire again in 2013 for arguing that Syrian chemical-weapons use “could’ve been an Israeli false-flag operation.” There is no evidence to support such a claim.

The Quincy Institute is also home to several experts who have accused American Jews of being loyal primarily to Israel, a charge that has often been used to slur Jews. . . . The Quincy expert Eli Clifton [has suggested] that the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies was originally a mouthpiece for the Israeli government and has insinuated itself into the American bureaucracy.

The retired diplomat Chas Freeman, who authored the Quincy Institute’s first policy brief in December, . . . in a speech in Moscow, accused American Jews of constituting an Israeli “fifth column” inside the United States.

These experts are less vocal, however, about other ethnic foreign-policy lobbies in the United States. In fact, the Quincy Institute’s cofounder and executive vice-president, Trita Parsi, is also the founder of the National Iranian American Council, which has battled accusations that it serves as a mouthpiece for the Iranian government.

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.