Earlier this week, the conservative writer David Horowitz denounced other conservatives who would support a third-party candidate over the presumptive Republican nominee. Horowitz focused his attack on William Kristol, whom the headline to his piece termed a “Republican spoiler and renegade Jew.” While condemning Kristol for allegedly betraying the Jewish people, Horowitz makes a point of clarifying that he himself “has never been to Israel and has never been a Zionist,” and is “an American first.” Jonathan Tobin comments:

[Horowitz’s] attempt to wrap himself in the star of David and to brand his opponents as traitors to the pro-Israel cause . . . should trouble everyone, including those who believe Trump is the lesser of two evils in 2016. . . .

[I]t is possible to argue, . . . as some ardent members of the pro-Israel community have done, that Trump is the better choice from the point of view of strengthening the U.S.-Israel alliance. But it is not possible to conclude that someone who believes Trump can’t be counted on or viewed as much of an improvement over [Hillary] Clinton is a traitor to Israel. It is certainly not possible to say that to Kristol, who has devoted so much effort to support of Israel throughout his career and especially as a leader of the opposition to Barack Obama’s policies. . . .

Neither Horowitz nor Breitbart.com [the website where the article appeared] has the right to assume the pose of a Jewish pope with the ability to excommunicate all those who cannot stomach Trump as heretics.

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.