Sunday was the first day of Benjamin Netanyahu’s long-awaited trial on three corruption-related charges. At issue, writes Shmuel Rosner, are not so much the facts of the case but the legality of Netanyahu’s actions. For his own part, Netanyahu has accused the Israeli justice system itself overstepping its bounds, and many Israelis support such a claim, as Rosner writes:

[A] significant portion of the Israeli public does not consider the proceedings that began today as Netanyahu’s trial. They consider them as the trial of the legal system. The charges: megalomania, overstepping authority, excessive use of legal force, pushing an ideological agenda. In fact—and there is a vast pool of evidence to prove it—what the public thinks about Netanyahu’s trial is generally analogous to what the public thinks about the legal system. Those who believe that it is a thorough, honest, and trustworthy system tend to accept the need for Netanyahu to be prosecuted. Those who doubt the legal system’s motivation and professionalism tend to oppose Netanyahu’s prosecution.

It is a sad day to see the prime minister standing trial. It is a reassuring day to see that even a prime minister must face the court. It is a fascinating day, in which the best and the brightest face each other for a high-noon battle. And yes, it is also a scary day, in which mighty forces clash and we, the witnesses, should beware of the fallout.

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.