In a recent article, complemented by a series of tweets, Argentinian president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner laid out the theory that the state prosecutor Alberto Nisman, tasked with investigating the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center, was murdered by a Jewish conspiracy aligned against her. Her theory involves an American Jewish investor engaged in a longstanding dispute with Argentina over unpaid debts, a Washington think tank, and Argentina’s central Jewish communal organization. Ben Cohen writes:

In common with many of today’s anti-Semitic rants, Kirchner didn’t mention the word “Jew” in either her article or in a bizarre series of tweets. . . . But the underlying meaning was crystal clear.

Given the flimsy connections [that tie together Kirchner’s theory]—grounded not on concrete evidence but on the anti-Semitic assumption that Jews who involve themselves in international affairs do so with a hidden agenda—it is hardly surprising that Nisman’s case against the Argentine government has been summarily dismissed in the wake of his death. Yesterday, the pro-Kirchner prosecutor Javier de Luca announced that he would not be pursuing Nisman’s complaint against the government. For good measure, de Luca added that German Moldes, another prosecutor who argued that Nisman’s complaint merited a federal investigation, was a “gangster.”

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.