In 2014, two Turkish-born Dutch politicians were expelled from the Dutch Labor party over their opposition to its new policies regarding the integration of immigrants. The pair went on to found an independent Muslim party, which now holds three seats (out of 150) in the nation’s parliament and has had successes in recent municipal elections—as have two or three other Muslim parties. Manfred Gerstenfeld notes some troubling aspects of the new parties’ rhetoric and even more troubling attitude toward Jews:

In Rotterdam before the 2018 municipal elections, three left-wing parties—Labor, Green Left, and the Socialist party (SP)—intended to cooperate with the Muslim party Nida. It then became known that Nida had called Israel a terror state in 2014 and would not refute this. Labor and Green Left backed out of the agreement, but the socialists remained. . . .

Earlier this year, almost all parties in the Amsterdam municipal council signed, at the request of the Jewish community, a document entitled the “Amsterdam Jewish Accord.” It states that Jews have a right to security paid for by the city government, that anti-Semitism needs to be fought, and that the Jewish elements of Amsterdam’s history should be taught to the general population. Two parties refused to sign the agreement: Denk and BIJ1, a party comprising mainly immigrants of African ancestry. A candidate in the Amsterdam elections claimed on behalf of Denk that Israel and the West had played a role in establishing Islamic State.

The pro-Israel organization CIDI has stated that Denk’s parliamentary questions and promotion on Facebook are riddled with anti-Semitic symbols, suggestions, and insinuations, hidden as criticism of Israel. . . .

Last year Israeli schoolchildren visited the Dutch parliament. [A] Muslim council member in The Hague, Abdoe Khoulani, called the students “Zionist terrorists in training” and “future child-murderers and occupiers.” A Dutch judge dismissed a court case against Khoulani, saying his remarks did not constitute incitement to hate.

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.