As life becomes increasingly dangerous for European Jews, and as European governments prove unable or unwilling to defend them, they must begin bearing arms and learning how to use them, argues Liel Leibovitz:

Against rampant violence [like the recent attack on a Danish synagogue], decent, liberal people look up to governments to maintain law and order. And Europe’s governments certainly excel at paying lip service to their Jewish citizens after they are slaughtered. Shortly after the attack in Copenhagen, the Danish ambassador to Israel . . . urged Denmark’s Jewish community to stay put, promising that his country will do “everything in our power so that the Jewish community in Denmark feels safe.”

Everything in the Danish government’s power, however, has not thus far included investing in actual security, which the country’s Jewish community has been requesting for years and which the government refuses to fund. Which, of course, is understandable: Denmark is one of the most enthusiastic supporters of virulently anti-Israeli organizations in Europe. After funneling approximately 30 million euros to the corrupt and tyrannical Palestinian Authority in the last five years alone, there are probably not enough kroner in the till to pay for securing the lives of 8,000 Danish Jews. . . .

European Jews with guns can make a difference, though. A well-armed Jewish population might make the jihadists—and their political enablers—think twice. More immediately, they are likely to save their own lives. Europe’s restrictive gun laws may pose a hurdle, but not a very onerous one.

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.