Founded in 1962 in Berkeley, California as a consortium of five Protestant institutions, the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) has since expanded to include eight schools, each representing a different Christian denomination, and several academic centers for the study of other religions, Judaism and Islam among them. In October of last year, it formally inaugurated its first non-Christian president—Rabbi Daniel Lehman—who had already held the job for a year. While GTU celebrated Lehman’s inauguration with much fanfare as a milestone of pluralism and tolerance, it had little to say when he left the position four months later.

Gabe Stutman concludes that the most probable explanation for Lehman’s departure is his Zionism. Likely responsible for his resignation is Alison Weir, a professional anti-Israel obsessive who lacks the tact to disguise her prejudice solely in left-wing clothing, happily rubbing elbows with anti-Semites ranging from Nation of Islam leaders to “Christian-identity” conspiracy theorists. Stutman writes:

Opposition surfaced publicly last September, a month before the inauguration, via an article on [the] anti-Israel news website, Israel-Palestine News. The site is run by Alison Weir. . . . At the inauguration, Weir and two others, described as “seventy-year-old peace advocates,” were asked to leave the event after handing out “fact sheets” critical of Lehmann. They read: “Will pro-Israel Rabbi Lehmann change GTU’s focus on justice and human rights?”

“Lehmann publicly emphasizes that he is a Zionist,” the handouts [accurately] stated. “Apparently in disregard for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.”

Those criticisms would eventually find purchase with more than 100 GTU alumni and a host of Bay Area clergy, who signed an open letter to the board of trustees expressing “concern” about Lehmann’s appointment. The letter, written by three Bay Area ministers who are alumni of GTU, described Lehmann’s views as “Islamophobic,” “racist,” and at odds “with the professed mission of GTU.” Lehmann is a “self-described Zionist,” the letter read.

GTU is a progressive institution. . . . The school has hosted pro-Palestinian events in the past, including a talk on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the anti-Zionist [and pro-Hamas and -Hizballah], Jewish author Judith Butler.

One of the only news outlets to cover Lehmann’s departure was Weir’s.

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.