In 2009, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) sued the online retailer for selling dozens of neo-Nazi books on its German website—books that have been banned in Germany. Yet not only are Amazon’s European websites still selling such books, they are now available on the U.S. website as well. Ron Radosh writes:

You will find [available on Amazon] The Myth of the Extermination of the Jews, The Six Million: Fact or Fiction, and many other such vile specimens of “literature.” If you don’t think readers are convinced by [such books], just look at the comments of those who have read [them]. . . .

[M]y concern for how such Nazi-like rot is so easily available for purchase should not lead to the accusation that I am calling for censorship. These modern deluded and insane racists can freely write and publish their own writings, and undoubtedly do sell them at “White Nationalist” events. Their availability does not mean that Amazon has to make them available for a wider public. The fact that these books exist does not mean [Amazon] must sell them.

Clearly, the AJC’s 2009 suit did not work. It’s time for Amazon to look carefully through its catalogue and delete these and other similar books for good.

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.