Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, returned to the public eye this year when a chairwoman of the anti-Trump Women’s March, having attended his annual “Savior’s Day” celebration—where he shared some of his poisonous anti-Semitic theories—praised him and then defended him against his critics. Separately, an African-American Washington, DC city councilman, also a Farrakhan supporter, gave a speech accusing the Rothschilds of controlling the weather. To James Kirchick, these and other incidents portend an upsurge of anti-Semitism among American blacks. He writes:

[T]he prevalence of, and insouciance toward, anti-Semitism in the African-American community mirrors a trend within the broader progressive community. On the left, anti-Semitism is increasingly downplayed because it supposedly [targets] people who are “white” and therefore in possession of “power.” . . .

Writing nearly 30 years ago, Shelby Steele recognized the “fundamental irony” of “black–Jewish bickering”—that is, “the irony of there being conflict where we presume there should be harmony”—that guarantees these periodic outbursts will always generate headlines. Most blacks seek no conflict with Jews, and vice-versa. Which is why it is all the more important for responsible black leaders to draw a line in the sand when it comes to toxic figures like Farrakhan, and to reject the excuses of their enablers. A political coalition that makes room for the likes of such individuals is one that will inherently be unwelcoming to Jews, and one that all decent people should reject.

The recent controversies are not so much a reflection of a major, growing rift between blacks and Jews as they are indications of two competing visions for America. On one side stands an increasingly fatalistic progressivism, which maintains a “no enemies to the left” strategy in fighting a twilight struggle against what it considers to be an incipient fascist dictatorship [in the form of Donald Trump’s presidency] and is willing to make common cause with all manner of illiberal and regressive political forces provided they hew to the party line. And on the other side sits the postwar American liberal tradition of pluralistic patriotism to which Jews of all political stripes have so faithfully pledged allegiance. All Americans, not just blacks and Jews, have an interest in the outcome of this conflict.

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.