Jews have lived in Afghanistan since the first millennium; at the beginning of the 20th century, the country was home to a Jewish population of about 40,000 souls. Now only one Jew is left, but anti-Semitic graffiti, theories, and sentiments remain widespread. Many of these come to the fore the celebration of Quds Day—an anti-Israel holiday created by the Islamic Republic in 1979. In Kabul, the annual Quds Day rally is sponsored by a Shiite cleric named Sayed Hussain Mazari, as Ezzatullah Mehrdad writes:

Few religious centers in Afghanistan are self-financed or locally funded. As in other Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain, and Pakistan, many of the Shiite scholars in Afghanistan are bankrolled by Iran. Asif Yousufi, a social activist who [this year] attended a student-led demonstration against the celebration of Quds Day, claims that Mazari is among them, though he believes the latter will not publicly acknowledge this.

The Islamic Republic of Iran . . . also maintains an intelligence presence in Afghanistan and supports groups here that serve its national interests. Some experts believe Iran might be behind the spread of anti-Semitism within its neighbor to the east as part of an effort to build a united front against the Jewish state.

But there are undoubtedly other sources as well:

[The anti-Semitism researcher Guenther] Jikeli says Jew-hatred in Afghanistan may also be a residual effect of propaganda efforts by Nazi Germany during World War II, which included radio programs the regime broadcast to Arabic-speaking countries demonizing Jews, [some of which reached non-Arab Afghanistan]. Nearly 80 years after the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler still enjoys widespread popularity in the country, and his image is sometimes used in advertisements—including for a public-speaking course that touts him as a model orator. A common Afghan expression says that Hitler left some Jews alive to remind the world just how noxious they are.

In private conversation, Afghan religious hardliners compare terrorists with Jews, [but conclude] that “even” Jewish people are better than terrorists. In political spheres, non-Pashtun ethnic groups hypothesize that the Pashtun, Afghanistan’s largest ethnicity, were originally Jews.

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.