Almost immediately after the White House announced the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued a press release stating its concern that “Judge Kavanaugh’s judicial record does not reflect the demonstrated independence and commitment to fair treatment for all that is necessary to merit a seat on our nation’s highest court.” Jonathan Tobin sees this statement, which makes no mention of either Jews or anti-Semitism, as a sign of the organization’s dangerous politicization under its current director, Jonathan Greenblatt:

Though it spent its first century of existence being careful to avoid getting labeled as a partisan outfit, in the three years since the ADL’s longtime national director Abe Foxman retired, Greenblatt has steadily pushed the group farther to the left and, in so doing, more or less destroyed its reputation of being above politics. After the ADL has repeatedly involved itself in partisan controversies, it is impossible to pretend that Greenblatt’s vision of the group isn’t fundamentally that of a Democratic-party auxiliary that is increasingly overshadowing and marginalizing its still-vital role as the nation’s guardian against anti-Semitism. . . . Not only is Greenblatt uninterested in avoiding accusations of partisanship, he has actively courted them, especially since Trump became president. . . .

Greenblatt, who had been rumored to be in line for a senior post in a putative Hillary Clinton administration, made no secret of his animus for the new president. In early 2017, Greenblatt didn’t hesitate to blame President Trump directly for what was being represented as a surge of anti-Semitic incidents. The surge was largely the result of a spate of bomb threats at Jewish community centers around the country. But it turned out that—contrary to the ADL’s charge that it was the work of alt-right extremists inspired or unleashed by Trump—a disturbed Israeli teenager had made the threats. The ADL never apologized for its misleading accusations. . . .

Succumbing to the temptation to join the fray against Kavanaugh without a moment’s hesitation wasn’t just a mistake. It was the act of a man who doesn’t even feel the need to maintain the pretense that the group he leads has a higher purpose than diving into the daily political scrum. . . . The question for the ADL is: how can it possibly do its job on anti-Semitism if that’s where Greenblatt has positioned it?

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.