According to a 2014 survey by the Anti-Defamation League, 60 percent of Malaysians hold anti-Semitic beliefs—the highest proportion of any country in Asia outside the Middle East. Hatred of Jews also figures prominently in Malaysian political discourse, rearing its head most recently in the context of the corruption scandal now rocking the country. Jon Emont connects these sentiments to the country’s own social and ethnic divisions:

Anti-Jewish prejudice in Malaysia did not develop in response to the tiny population of Jews who lived here, but instead was tuned to the frequencies of a Muslim world that saw the rise of Israel—and the subjugation of the Palestinians—as the religion’s great humiliation. . . . [Now commonplace in Malaysia is the] idea . . . that Jews are using rival political parties as proxies to dismantle the Muslim Malaysian state. . . .

There are strong similarities between the prejudice that Jews faced in Europe and the one faced by ethnic Chinese throughout Southeast Asia. In both cases, heightened senses of nationalism in host countries in the 20th century led to systematic persecution of the “entrepreneurial minority” based on accusations that the minority was abusing its host country’s generosity and exploiting locals for its community’s own benefits. . . .

[Furthermore, the Muslim, ethnically Malay] ruling party, [now using anti-Semitic allegations to defend its prime minister from charges of corruption], is facing a challenge from an Islamist party that promotes the use of Islamic law. Despite their major philosophical differences, this party and the ethnic-Chinese Democratic Action Party (DAP) have formed an alliance to challenge the ruling United Malay National Organization, so linking DAP with Jewish money could be an attempt to undermine this alliance . . . [in] an attempt to “out-Muslim” rival political parties.

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.