In the Indian city of Alibaug, located some 60 miles south of Mumbai, a street-side drink stand that sells sodas produced and bottled by its owner is considered a major local attraction. It is also a persistent remnant of Alibaug’s Jewish history. Namita Devidayal writes:

With its Mangalore-tiled roof and Marathi signs, this could be any other drink stand [in this part of India], if it weren’t for the star of David and pictures of Moses that hang on the wall. This quaint beverage stop, which serves an array of delicious bespoke carbonated drinks like ginger-lemon soda, ice-cream soda, and masala soda, was founded 80 years ago by a Bene Israel Jew, Daniel Samson Digodkar.

Like many of his brethren—at one time there was a population of several thousand Jews in this area, and a synagogue still stands tall in Alibaug—his first name, Daniel, attests to the Jewish heritage, while the surname acknowledges his [native] village, Digodia. This intermingling of names reflects the manner in which the [local] Jews have commingled the regional culture with their very particular rituals, dissolving like sugar into water—in this particular case, carbonated water. . . .

For the longest time, the Bene Israel of Alibaug ran rice and oil-pressing mills. When the Digodkars’ mill shut down, Daniel Samson pursued a personal passion—creating flavorful drinks, first with a marble inside the bottle to contain the bubbles, later with sealed caps. When he died, his sister Mary Moses David took over. Her son Sydney is one of the last in the family—indeed in the community—left here today. . . .

While Alibaug once had the highest concentration of Jews in the area, most of them, including the Digodkars, have now emigrated to Israel.

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.