While the situation of Jews remains far more precarious in Western Europe than in the U.S., there is plenty of reason to worry—such is the consensus of a panel of experts who recently gathered to discuss the subject. The veteran pollster John McLaughlin cites extensive survey data showing overwhelmingly favorable attitudes toward Jews and Israel among Americans (19:12), while Mitchell Silber, a former New York Police Department intelligence analyst, surveys the far more disturbing data from Britain (53:28). Elan Carr, the State Department’s anti-Semitism envoy, in an overview of the threats to Jews on both sides of the Atlantic, notes a disturbing trend whereby “If you call yourself an anti-Semite they run you out of town; if you call yourself an anti-Zionist, you get tenure” (1:19:17).

Going back to the early 1990s, the French journalist Marc Weitzmann explains the strange convergences of far-right, far-left, and Islamist anti-Semitism—and their anti-American corollaries—in his country (2:03:04). Finally, the French Jewish activist Simone Rodan-Benzaquen urges American Jews, and their allies, to avoid the mistakes made in Europe, where Jews did not begin fighting back vigorously against rising anti-Semitism until much of the damage was already done (2:35:22). (Moderated by Ken Weinstein and Nina Shea. Video, three hours.)

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.