The death—most likely murder—of Alberto Nisman, the Argentinian prosecutor investigating the 1994 bombing of Buenos Aires’s AMIA Jewish center, takes its place within a long history of anti-Semitism and political corruption in Argentina. Ben Cohen writes:

It’s important to bear three indisputable truths in mind: First, no one has ever been convicted for the [1992] Israeli embassy bombing. Second, no one has ever been convicted for the AMIA bombing. Third, the most tangible outcome of this entire process has been the suspicious death of the one man who dedicated himself to unraveling these grotesque mysteries: Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor; Alberto Nisman, the Jew. . . . .

From the moment Nisman’s body was discovered, the inquiry into his death faithfully reflected the judicial sham that had plagued the actual AMIA investigation. At first, the authorities insinuated that Nisman had shot himself in the temple. A few days later, it was noted that the fatal bullet had entered above and behind his ear—a strange method, indeed, to end one’s own life with a gun. . . .

These basic errors—whether caused by incompetence, design, or a mixture of the two—were compounded by [President Cristina] Kirchner’s own statements. Increasingly sounding like an angst-ridden protagonist in a telenovela, the president initially declared that Nisman had probably committed suicide. She also breathlessly accused Nisman of working at the behest of foreign powers, stating that during a trip he made to Europe a few weeks before he died, he’d received precise instructions on how to proceed with the accusations against her. Then, with a remarkable lack of self-awareness, Kirchner changed her mind; Nisman’s death, she now said, was probably a murder. . . .

“Which Nisman do I go with?” Kirchner herself asked in early March, implying that because the special prosecutor had once praised her remarks about AMIA before the United Nations, there was no basis for his later accusations against her. For good measure, Kirchner then offered up the outlines of a conspiracy theory: why, she asked, “does the state of Israel demand [justice] for AMIA, and not for the blowing up of their own embassy?” She offered no further explanation; in the Kirchnerite universe, it is enough to encourage speculation about Israel’s agenda and allow people to draw their own malign conclusions.

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.