As part of a larger project to restore Casablanca’s old quarter, Morocco is launching a renovation of the city’s Beth El synagogue. Larbi Arbaoui writes (with video):

In 2013, Morocco, with the contribution of Germany, finished a two-year-long renovation of the “Slat Alfassiyine” synagogue in Fez, which was until the last century one of the largest in the country.

Among the 30 synagogues located in Casablanca, the Temple Beth El synagogue is probably the most beautiful. Beth El, . . . also called the Algerian Temple, is the venue where the Jewish community celebrates religious events. With its stained-glass windows, giant chandeliers, and unique architecture, made of white and gilded plaster, the synagogue is among the city’s [most popular] tourist attractions.

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.