On Thursday Valerie Plame, a former CIA officer, sent a tweet reading “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars,” followed by a link to an article with that title by one Philip Giraldi, who regularly writes on the theme of malign Jewish influence on U.S. foreign policy, usually for far-right websites. The article asserts that Jews should recuse themselves from positions in government in which they might influence policy, and Jewish pundits should be identified by their religion when appearing on television. After receiving much criticism, she apologized. Alan Dershowitz writes:

The article [in question] contains the usual anti-Semitic tropes: Jews are guilty of dual loyalty; they control politicians, the media and entertainment; they want the U.S. to fight wars for the country to which they have real allegiance—Israel; they are dangerous to America. . . . This was not the first time Plame retweeted Giraldi’s garbage. [In her initial response to criticism of the article, before backing down and apologizing], she described it as: “Yes, very provocative, but thoughtful. Many neocon hawks ARE Jewish. Ugh.”

Nor is this the only time that Plame has tweeted other nonsense from the bigoted platform this piece came from. I actually read the Philip Giraldi article—before I was aware of the Plame tweet—on a neo-Nazi website, where Giraldi’s articles are frequently featured. For Plame to claim that she was unaware of the anti-Semitic content of Giraldi’s article is to ignore reality. Plame had to be aware, since she was aware of Giraldi’s bigotry. Her apologies ring hollow. . . .

The Plame incident reflects a broader problem. . . . There is a growing tolerance for anti-Semitism. Even when some people themselves do not harbor these feelings, they are willing to support those who do, as long as the anti-Semites are on their side of the political spectrum. . . .

The problem exists both on the hard right and the hard left. Both extremes see the world in racial, ethnic, and religious terms. Both engage in identity politics: the hard left gives more weight to the views of certain minorities; while the hard right gives less weight to the views of these same minorities. . . .

What the hard right and hard left share . . . is bigotry toward Jews: the neo-Nazi right hates the Jewish people, and the hard left hates the nation-state of the Jewish people and those Jews who support it. Both views are bigoted and must not become acceptable among centrist liberals and conservatives.

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.