From Nigeria to Pakistan, Christians have been suffering persecution, intimidation, enslavement, and murder at the hands of Muslim neighbors and rulers. During this past Christmas season, writes Raymond Ibrahim, the chaos sweeping through Syria, Iraq, and parts of Africa unleashed new waves of bloodshed; in other places, like Iran, persecution is simply a fact of reality. An example from Kenya:

Gunmen from the Islamic organization al-Shabab launched an early-morning raid on quarry workers while they slept in their worksite tents near the city of Mandera, along the Somali border. Christians and Muslims were separated before the Christians, 36 of them, were beheaded or shot dead. Afterwards, al-Shabab posted a statement condemning the “crusaders”—a standard jihadi reference to Christians—and added: “We are uncompromising in our beliefs, relentless in our pursuit, ruthless against the disbelievers, and we will do whatever necessary to defend our Muslim brethren suffering from Kenya’s aggression.” The killings occurred ten days after al-Shabab’s attack on a bus and the massacre of 28 of its non-Muslim (primarily Christian) passengers. Again, Muslim passengers were singled out and left unharmed.

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.