The latest obsession of the self-appointed constables of political correctness, writes James Kirchick, involves not simply identifying victims but constantly adopting new categories, upgrading some, and downgrading others. At the very lowest rung lie the Jews, whose persecution or murder merits scarcely a peep. Such thinking is not just the domain of far-left websites; in the promotion of “Islamophobia” as a hate crime, it has penetrated the highest reaches of the U.S. government. Kirchick writes:

Like gay men, Jews have been relegated to the bottom of the progressive victim pyramid, a low ranking that has held fast in spite of the rampant bigotry and violent attacks directed at them. . . .

Since the philosophy of the progressive speech police is so obviously shaping high-level U.S. government policy, it is hard to dismiss the efficacy of their tactics. Here it is important to note that all the hypersensitive concern about “Islamophobia,” and corresponding lack of ardor for combating anti-Jewish hatred, has no relation whatsoever to actual facts. The latest FBI crime statistics report six times as many hate-crime incidents directed against Jews as they do against Muslims. Likewise, in Europe, Jews are more likely to be victimized by hate crime than Muslims, who are themselves usually the perpetrators of anti-Semitic attacks.

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.