While Bernie Sanders is not the only Democratic presidential candidate who declined to attend the annual conference of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), he is the only one who explained that he would not do so because the organization serves as a platform “for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights.” (Elizabeth Warren tacitly endorsed a similar statement.) Alex Joffe examines the implications these statements may have if Sanders wins the nomination:

[First of all], candidates for House and Senate races . . . will be pressured to fall in line with the presidential frontrunner. . . . and to vilify Israel. . . . Moreover, this litmus test will be applied to American Jews, long [among] the most dependable supporters of the Democratic party. The choice between party loyalty—a key element of American Jewish identity—or support for a country that has been labeled “right-wing” and “racist” by Sanders will be difficult. . . . Whether the majority of American Jews will risk being labeled “right wing” and “racist” is unclear.

And should Sanders fail either to become the nominee or to be elected president in November, it is a virtual certainty that, in precisely the same manner of Jeremy Corbyn and the British Labor party, Israel and Jews will be blamed for his failure. The belief in Zionist conspiracies are a key element of progressive politics and will only expand as disloyalty to the party ideology and to its leader is rooted out.

[T]he equation of Zionism and Israel with “right-wing” politics, “racism,” and its American variant “white supremacy,” has taken a huge leap forward with Sanders. Unless he can be stopped by his own party or by the reelection of Donald Trump, these concepts will become absolute fixtures on the American left. Combating these conceptions within American society as a whole, however, is a bipartisan task.

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.