Jeremy Corbyn may be poised to become the new leader of the UK’s Labor party. Dalibor Rohac comments on his unsavory associations:

[Corbyn] hosted the show Comment, on Press TV, the [official television] channel of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2009, Corbyn welcomed Dyab Abou Jahjah to the UK’s parliament. Jahjah is a political activist and publisher who became known for publishing, in 2006, a series of cartoons poking fun at the Holocaust. As late as 2013, Corbyn attended events organized by Paul Eisen, at that time known as an outspoken Holocaust denier. In 2012, he hosted the hate preacher Raed Salah at the House of Commons. In a sermon two years later, Salah—whom Corbyn had called a “very honored citizen” and invited for tea—expressed hope that Jerusalem would soon become “the capital of the global caliphate.“

Corbyn also came publicly to the defense of Stephen Sizer, an Anglican vicar who, as he put it, “dared to speak out against Zionism.” In February this year, Sizer was banned by church authorities from using social media after he suggested on Facebook that Israel was responsible for 9/11.

The shared affection for Iran, Hizballah, and Hamas—“an organization that is dedicated toward the good of the Palestinian people,” according to Corbyn—the numerous ties with anti-Semites, and sympathy for the Kremlin would normally place Corbyn in the company of Hungary’s Jobbik and Europe’s other far-right extremists. What is shocking is the double standard with which Corbyn’s supporters are viewing his, shall we say, “eccentricities.”

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.