Following the car-ramming attack by a neo-Nazi at the recent, violent protest in Charlottesville, many American conservatives made clear their disgust with the variety of racist groups gathered there. Many on both right and left also criticized the president for not being quicker and less equivocal in his condemnations. Yet, notes Ruthie Blum, many leftwing commentators “went even further, blaming not only Trump but the United States itself for the climate that led to the events in Virginia, with [one writer] arguing that ‘What Happened in Charlottesville Is All Too American.’” Blum wonders why the same premise of guilt by association doesn’t apply to the Palestinian Authority (PA):

PA schools and summer camps educate children to believe that murdering on behalf of the “liberation of Palestine”—and in the name of Allah—is not only honorable but worthy of glorification. PA imams preach jihad. PA sports arenas and tournaments are named after “martyred” terrorists, all of whose families receive a salary of more than $3,000 per month for life. . . .

Although Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip, is shunned by U.S. negotiators, Fatah, the party headed by the PA president Mahmoud Abbas, is considered a potential partner for peace with Israel.

Official Fatah social-media pages, however, openly laud and encourage “lone wolves” to arm themselves with knives and vehicles with which to slaughter Israelis whenever and wherever possible. . . . A Palestinian who uses his car as a deadly weapon is viewed by his peers and rulers as a hero. Physical violence is officially sanctioned and rewarded.

An American who commits violence is demonized by everyone other than a handful of hardcore bigots. Still, many in the U.S. consider America to be a racist country and the Palestinians worthy of stalwart support.

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.