As the Jewish new year begins, with its many holidays, Israelis will be confined to a 500-meter radius around their homes, and a series of other stringent measures similar to those imposed in March at the height of the COVID-19 crisis are going into effect. The restrictions come amidst much dissatisfaction over the government’s handling of the situation. Raphael Bouchnik-Chen explains how the threat from the virus again became so dire:

The second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in Israel is proving to be more severe than its predecessor, and the data on its spread are dizzying. . . . The current dramatic infection rate in Israel is not preordained but largely an outcome of public contempt and disregard for social-distancing instructions that rendered the decisions of the political and professional echelons totally ineffectual. This tendency was also fueled by the perceived application of different standards for different sectors when it comes to enforcing restrictions on gatherings, and especially by the focus on very specific population groups.

The legal restrictions that prevent decision-makers from enforcing social-distancing restrictions on the mass demonstrations outside the prime minister’s residence—in flagrant violation of Supreme Court President Aharon Barak’s ruling that limited demonstrations opposite Prime Minister Yitzḥak Rabin’s official residence during the Oslo process—are a Pyrrhic victory for the self-styled defenders of the “freedom of expression.” Apart from its immediate adverse health implications, the inevitable consequence of this absurdity is to encourage defiance even among those who have already internalized the need to obey the rules.

And as if that were not enough, agenda-driven public-health “experts” and commentators keep saying the demonstrations should continue and even broaden in scope since there is no danger of infection in the open air.

If implemented with resolve, aptitude, and sensitivity, this lockdown could curb the rising infection rate just as its predecessors did during the first wave in Israel and around the world.

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.